Pimento

What is Pimento Cheese?

The spread began in the Northern United States in the early 20th century as a homemade snack. A 1908 Good Housekeeping recipe used soft cream cheese and minced pimentos. In 1909 Eva Green Fuller's Up-to-Date Sandwich Book called for pimentos and Neufchâtel, and commercial versions were on sale by 1910.

Canned Spanish pimentos were expensive, so Southern farmers began growing their own. Southern cooks adapted the recipe with hoop cheese and mayonnaise. After World War II the dish faded across most of the country but held on in the South, and by the early 2000s Southern writers and chefs were publishing recipes and putting it on restaurant menus.

The basic version is grated cheddar cheese, mayonnaise and chopped pimentos mixed into a chunky paste. Regional and family recipes add horseradish, cream cheese, salt and pepper, Louisiana-style hot sauce, Worcestershire sauce, cayenne pepper, paprika, jalapeños, onions, garlic or dill pickles.

It is spread on crackers or celery, scooped onto corn chips or tortilla chips, stirred into grits, mixed with mashed yolks for deviled eggs, and spooned over hamburgers and hot dogs. As a sandwich filling it sometimes appears as a cocktail finger sandwich with the crusts trimmed and cut into triangles, or rolled up and sliced into pinwheels.

Pimento cheese sandwiches have been sold at the Masters Tournament since the 1940s. When Augusta National Golf Club changed food suppliers in 2013, the new supplier could not match the old recipe and the sandwich tasted markedly different.

Similar dishes exist elsewhere. The Philippines has cheese pimiento made with queso de bola, Kenai dip comes from a butcher shop in Kenai, Alaska, and almogrote in the Canary Islands uses old goat cheese and local hot peppers.