How The Master’s Made Pimento Cheese Southern

Did The Masters create a regional staple? An investigation

Golf Digest

The Master’s is a tournament of traditions: the azaleas, the green jackets, the Champion’s Dinner. More specifically, it’s a tournament of Southern traditions, the tournament itself acting as one of the South’s great cultural exports, along with the Kentucky Derby. For one weekend, the nation turns its gaze south, to Georgia, to Amen Corner and the Butler Cabin at Augusta National Golf Club. That’s perhaps why, of all the traditions, perhaps none is as beloved as Augusta National’s food. You can get an egg salad sandwich for $1.50, chicken salad for $3, a chicken biscuit for $3, as well.

And then there’s the pimento cheese. Oh, the pimento cheese.

Served in green wrappers (to blend in with the grass if littered onto the ground) for only $1.50, the pimento cheese sandwich at Augusta National remains one of the stars of the weekend. “You gotta love it,” said famed chef David Chang last year. Years ago, Ted Godfrey, a restauranteur who once made the sandwiches for the tournament, told ESPN, “That shit gets you religious.”

Ask just about anybody about pimento cheese, and you’ll get a similar answer. Atlanta chef Hugh Acheson describes the food as, “a versatile southern staple.” Linton Hopkins, another Georgia chef, told Eater, “Pimento cheese is something that’s always present in a Southern kitchen.” John T. Edge, the director of the Southern Foodways Alliance, was once asked about pimento cheese’s growing popularity amongst foodies in cities like Los Angeles and New York. “Glad to see the Yankees finally catching on,” he quipped.

There’s just one problem with all this: pimento cheese isn’t actually Southern. In fact, the Yankees aren’t catching up; it was once theirs.

Bear with me. I promise we’ll get back to golf in a minute.

Today, pimento cheese is a blend of hard cheeses, mayonnaise, and peppers. But at the beginning, the recipe was much simpler, born out of two new food discoveries. In the late 1870s, American farmers developed a new type of soft cheese, and one company started to sell it under the brand name, “Philadelphia.” Like that, cream cheese became a sensation.

Around the same time, importers started to introduce sweet red peppers from Spain, which they branded “pimientos.” By the early 19^th century, in publications like Good Housekeeping and Boston Cooking-School Magazine started to popularize recipes for blending the two together. Read one recipe, “Grind two small cans of pimentos with two cakes of [cream] cheese, and season with a little salt. Spread on thin slices of lightly buttered white bread.”

Soon, manufacturers—the majority of which were based in New York or the Midwest—decided to sell the creation directly to consumers. In 1910, a Minnesota grocer bought an ad in a local paper that said, “Pimiento Cheese—Something New.”

But no matter where recipes were printed or advertisements were run, as pimento cheese grew in popularity, it was never mentioned as a Southern food. It was just a dish that anybody, anywhere, would eat—and did.

Then came WWII, and with the war, America seemed to forget about its latest fad. Facing cratering sales numbers across the country, manufacturers pulled pimento cheese from shelves. Search newspaper archives and recipe books, and in the 1940s, pimento cheese is hardly ever mentioned. Slowly, it seemed to disappear.

Until The Master’s.

In 1949, Hodges and Ola Herndon, a couple who lived down the road from Augusta National, cooked all the tournament’s concessions in their kitchen. Their son, Tom, would recruit fraternity brothers from the Phi Delt house at Georgia to help him sell the food at the course at various stalls; they had to ask their business school professor for the week off. In that small kitchen, Hodges and Ola made egg salad, ham sandwiches…and pimento cheese.

The pimento, especially, was a hit.

After the 1949 tournament, Master’s founder Bobby Jones and Augusta National chairman Clifford Roberts wrote the Herndon’s a note to thank them for their hard work. “Both of us happened to have heard a number of complimentary remarks regarding the good service and food you provided,” they wrote. “We were particularly pleased to learn that you could provide a really good sandwich for twenty-five cents.”

For years, the Herndon’s managed the concessions themselves, before they eventually handed their secret recipe to other caterers who could more easily handle the crowds. The sandwich, made of only cheese and white bread, became a staple of the tournament.

Yet still, in any national forum, pimento cheese was hardly mentioned.

In 1956, CBS started to broadcast The Master’s nationally. For the first time, the world got a glimpse of Augusta National. Slowly, they started to learn about its traditions—especially those curious sandwiches.

Most historians today say that they aren’t sure how or why it happened, but that some time in the late 50s, pimento cheese started to become known as a Southern staple, a regional food. It was embraced as a symbol of the South itself. Larry T. McGehee once wrote that it was, “one of those major southern distinguishing institutions, right up there as a subject of debate with religion, politics, barbecue, biscuits, gravy, mint juleps, and the proper age for curing of country hams.”

I have never read a historian directly connect the The Master’s and the South’s burgeoning claim on pimento cheese. But look at the history, and this much is undeniable: the timeline matches up. So, for the first time ever at The Word, I’d like to put forward a new theory for any historians reading this post: Let’s connect some dots, and let’s recognize Augusta National as being responsible for yet one more great contribution to the South. Yankees might have made it first, but we have The Master’s to thank for making pimento cheese ours.

With that, enjoy the golf this weekend. And while you do, get yourself some white bread, some peppers, cheese, and mayonnaise (Duke’s, please). Make your own pimento cheese, and spread some on two pieces of bread. You’ll be tasting a bit of The Master’s legacy with each bite.

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🇺🇸 Want more Master’s lore? Check out one of our favorite stories from the archive about Ronald Reagan, Amen Corner, and the craziest round in Augusta National history.

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