Originating pimento burgers is a distinction that could be claimed by any fast food place that ever served pimento cheese sandwiches and hamburgers. When I was a carhop in 1950, making $1.50 a night plus tips and a meal, I often smeared a thick topping of pimento cheese on an otherwise pedestrian hamburger. We can speculate without much danger of contradiction that similar mergers occurred in hundreds of home kitchens and drive-in restaurants.
Pimento cheese is one of those major southern distinguishing institutions, right up there as a subject for ferocious debate with religion, politics, barbecue, biscuits, gravy, mint juleps, and the proper age and curing of country hams.
Before she gave up her kitchen, my mother made pimento cheese regularly, and her former minister would drive all the way from Indianapolis to west Tennessee to eat it. My mother makes her pimento cheese with a block of American cheese, but my wife uses Velveeta. Most purists would feel they are both wrong, and that pimento cheese can only be made with sharp cheddar or “rat cheese.” Some pimento preparers blend cheddar and one or more other cheeses.
Other debates focus on what brand of mayonnaise to use (or whether to make your own), whether to drain the pimientos and leave the juice, whether to mix the concoction with utensils or with your hands or feed it through a meat grinder, whether to add sugar or how much, whether to throw in olives or jalapeños, whether to use chopped pimientos or whole or sliced ones and how many to use, whether to add milk or cream cheese or lemon juice or salt or Tabasco or onions or garlic—or Worcestershire sauce (as Elvis did).
There are even debates about how to spell it or pronounce it. Most recipes and menus call it pimento cheese, but technically it is made with pimiento peppers. Pimiento is Spanish for pepper. Upper-class consumers spread it on celery stalks or gourmet crackers and call it “puh-mintah,” but most folks mumble it and call it “p’minnah.”
In America, Georgia is the biggest producer. According to the Southern Foodways Alliance (based at Ole Miss, and one of my favorite organizations), prepared pimento cheese was available in southern groceries as far back as 1915, and in 1916 George Reigel of Pomona Products Company started canning Sunshine Pimentos in Griffin, Ga., which spread to kitchens everywhere.
Perhaps they serve pimento cheese sandwiches at the Masters Tournament in Augusta because of that Georgia connection. We bet there are more pimientos grown in Georgia than peaches, and that as long as they are redesigning their state flag there, they might as well change their slogan from “The Peach State” to “The Pimento State.”
There is very good news this month for southerners tired of debating the multitudinous varieties of barbecue. We can turn our attention for the summer to pimento cheese. (It sure beats being consumed by debates on the economy.)
Southern Foodways Alliance, the Southeast Dairy Association, and website are teaming up to collect pimento cheese recipes and memories. Their enticing announcement includes these instructions:
“Tell us about how your mother always hand-grated her cheese. Let the world know about how your father’s homemade mayonnaise made all the difference. Tell us a story of 100 or so words about what pimento cheese has meant to you and your people. Include a recipe and please detail the recipe’s provenance.”
The deadline for entries is July 31 and the winner will receive a free trip to the Southern Foodways Symposium in October. The winning recipe will be featured by Chef Louis Osteen of Louis’s at Pawley’s during November.
If I can find out what “provenance” means in this invitation, I may enter.
Larry McGehee, professor and vice president at Wofford College, can be contacted by e-mail at mcgeheelt@wofford.edu
