Blue Ridge Country - November/December 2019 - 62

F L AV O R S

NEUFCHÂTE
CHEESE PLU L
DICED PIME S
PEPPERS PL NTO
US . . .

A MULTI-STATE APPRECIATION

Pimento
Cheese

From school lunch boxes to elegant buffets,
pimento cheese can be traditionally simple
or wildly creative.
By FRED & JILL SAUCEMAN | Photos by FRED SAUCEMAN

hen the late B.J. Broadwater
finished his degree in pharmacy at the Medical College
of Virginia in Richmond, he
had some more learning to
do. He was well-versed in drug interactions and the procedures to compound
medications, but he didn't know a thing about making
pimento cheese.
He carried sack lunches of pimento cheese sandwiches
to Shoemaker Elementary School in Scott County, Virginia, in the 1920s, but he had never made one. In his
day, most every drugstore had a lunch counter. When he
opened Broadwater Drug on East Jackson Street in Gate
City, alongside that sophisticated education from Richmond, he sought tutoring in pimento cheese creation
from his mother in Southwest Virginia.
Pimento cheese has always been the pride of home
kitchens. The late North Carolina novelist Reynolds Price
once wrote, "I've failed in a long effort to trace the origins
of pimento cheese, but it was the peanut butter of my
childhood-homemade by Mother."
Price said he could easily eat a pound of pimento
cheese in two days, "especially if life is hard."
He may have been unaware of the product's history,
but he was certainly onto something when he connected
pimento cheese with hard times, whether emotional or
financial. The Broadwater recipe is typical for its brevity:
pimentos, black pepper, a speck of sugar, mayonnaise,
and the cheese itself. Many recipes are even shorter.
Promotional language for a recent book on pimento
cheese claims that it is "taking the North by storm." Pimento cheese is as closely identified with the South as
barbecue and SEC football. But it just might have been

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created above the Mason-Dixon Line.
Anne Byrne, former food editor for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, writes, "It's well documented that the
first pimento cheese was a blend of Neufchâtel cheese and
diced pimento peppers. It was sold by the slice or in a jar
in early 1900s groceries all over the country, from Richmond to Portland."
Food historian Robert F. Moss adds, "Commerciallymade pimento cheese hit the market around the beginning of 1910 and was distributed to grocery stores across
the country, starting in the Midwest."
Moss writes that an American version of Neufchâtel
was first made in New York in the 1870s and that within
a few decades, cream cheese was introduced.
With the importation of sweet red peppers from Spain
into America, the two mandatory ingredients were in
place. But how did pimento cheese become a "Southern
thing"?
Enter two primary characters, at almost exactly the
same time. The first was George Riegel of Experiment,
Georgia. Byrne credits him with being the first farmer in
the United States to grow the Spanish pimento. He obtained seeds from the Spanish consulate in 1916.
The very next year, Duke's Mayonnaise was born in
Greenville, South Carolina. With the U.S. entry into
World War I in 1917, Eugenia Duke incorporated her
product into pimento cheese and other sandwiches and
began selling them to the soldiers who came to train at

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Blue Ridge Country - November/December 2019

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