A black bean chorizo casserole is topped with lime crema.

Casseroles have an image problem.

The word itself conjures canned cream of mushroom soup and fried onions, limp green beans and rubbery noodles, the stuff of uninspired potlucks and Grandma’s house.

This isn’t to say you don’t have a soft spot for a good homey casserole, perhaps a nostalgic tuna noodle number set out on the kitchen table.

But the coziness of the casserole may have eclipsed the culinary virtues of the dish, which is not dowdy in its DNA. It is not inherently bland or one-note. It does not have to contain even a single strand of melted cheese, or be dusted with crushed potato chips. Quite the opposite. The casserole can be nuanced and urbane, with room for fresh ingredients, clever details and a vivid palette of flavors.

After all, there’s nothing wrong with baking assorted ingredients together in a dish, which is essentially what a casserole is. When done just right, the elements merge in the oven’s heat, building on one another until the flavors unite into a delicious whole, preferably one with a golden top and appealingly moist center. Then there is the matter of how amply a casserole feeds a crowd, and how once it is in the oven, it can be ignored until dinnertime.

In the U.S., casseroles swerved toward convenience, especially in the postwar years, when newly introduced lines of canned food had an air of modern glamour. Cooks were taught to rely on cans for ease and what was said to be good health, since the cans contained factory-produced, sterile ingredients. This gave birth to the likes of the famous eight-can casserole with canned chicken, two kinds of “cream of” soup, evaporated milk and canned chow mein noodles.

Compare this with what Floyd Cardoz, the chef of North End Grill (and formerly of Tabla), was eating in Bombay as a child. You wouldn’t necessarily think of a fragrant baked rice dish with cardamom, cinnamon, golden fried onion and browned meat as a casserole. But biryani meets the definition with panache.

Other New York chefs have put casseroles on their menus, from the highbrow interpretations of macaroni and cheese (yes, a casserole) to gnocchi gratins covered in pecorino to baked ratatouilles.

Nicholas Wilber, the chef at the Fat Radish, has served cassoulet, potpies and savory crumbles to an appreciative, stylish throng. “Making a casserole is easy,” he said. “You just toss everything into a dish and bake it all together. But making a good casserole is much harder. You have to really think about how the ingredients are going to meld as they cook.”