The History of Pimento Cheese

While pimento cheese is now considered a homemade Southern classic, it has its roots in industrialization. In the late 1800s, Philadelphia Cream Cheese was invented in New York. Around the same time, sweet red peppers imported from Spain became available in the United States for the first time and were soon being canned and sold under the name “pimentos,” a term that stemmed from the original Spanish name, pimiento. The two ingredients became popular in home economics and were widely used separately. Around the turn of the 20th century, home cooks began combining the two ingredients. In 1908, an article in Good Housekeeping recommended making sandwiches filled with a blend of soft cream cheese, mustard, chives, and minced pimentos. Similar recipes appeared in cookbooks like Eva Green Fuller's Up-to-Date Sandwich Book and various magazines in the years directly before and after World War I. However, the new food wasn’t just a semi-homemade favorite. Cheese manufacturers caught on to the trend and began commercially manufacturing pimento cheese around 1910. Although most manufacturers were based in New York or Wisconsin, the product quickly spread to many parts of the country. Pimento cheese became especially popular in the South. Notably, the South became the center of the American pimento growing industry around the same time. After World War II, the popularity of ready-made pimento cheese began to wane, but at some point in the dish’s history, Southern cooks had begun making their own homemade version using hoop cheese (and, later, grated cheddar cheese), mayonnaise, pimentos, and occasionally extras like onions, mustard, lemon juice, and jalapeños. The homemade version continued to flourish in the South and is now closely associated with Southern cuisine. Today, pimento cheese is still widely used to add flavor to sandwiches, burgers, and more, especially in the Southern regions of the country.