Molly McNeal
Pimento cheese sandwich
That my parents’ divorce created a crisis of identity for me will surprise no one. What may surprise a few, though, is that I do not mean a crisis of self-identity. I'm referring to something much more consequential and important, especially for a Southerner—and one with an appetite. I’m referring to the identity of pimento cheese.
Don’t get me wrong. As someone born and raised south of the Mason-Dixon line, I’ve known the basic ingredients of “the pâté of the South” since I was tall enough to survey the food table at any family gathering—funerals, weddings. or reunions. Indeed, that other holy trinity—cheese, pimento and mayonnaise—has lurked in most of my life’s refrigerators. What eluded me about the dish, for decades, was its essential character, temperament—its personality, if you will.
I mean, is pimento cheese meant strictly to be a sandwich spread, or can it serve as a dip? Also, is it comfort food, to be indulged in liberally, or a snack to tide one over? Is it a workingman’s easy, cheap lunch or does the snobbery it occasionally inspires point to a more highfalutin’ spirit? Most importantly, is the formal three-ingredient recipe to be followed like a religion, or can it serve as a base for exciting additions like, say, sliced jalapeños and green onions?
If putting these questions to a food seems odd, let me just say, I love pimento cheese, always have. Not knowing the answers felt like having a close friend whose politics you don’t know. It felt like I never knew pimento cheese’s politics. And as anyone who has lived through the last several U.S. presidential elections knows, that meant I didn’t truly know pimento cheese.
[Read this: "Use Your Head—Jarred Zeringue on all things hog's head cheese"]
So why blame the divorce? It all goes back to the store-bought pimento cheese (Mrs. Stratton’s) of my childhood. At my mother’s home, the cheese was to be consumed between two bread slices, typically at lunch, and, frankly, when there was nothing else to eat. It was, in a word, uninspiring.
Meanwhile, at my father’s, there would almost always be a metal mixing bowl in the refrigerator that contained a homemade pimento cheese concoction with downright addictive qualities. Making a sandwich of that stuff was just wasteful: you’d end up eating two more, heathenlike. Instead, my father, an inspired chef, favored getting that bowl out, opening a bag of chips (Fritos or tortillas) and snacking on it while he cooked dinner.
These dueling visions of pimento cheese left me unable to discern the true identity of one of the South’s most iconic foods. It felt like failing some legacy, which is a tough burden for a Southerner to carry.
Happily, I was able to resolve this culinary conflict by learning more about the history of pimento cheese, as well as my family, and Mississippi itself.
First, a decade-plus ago, I learned from the great Robert Moss, contributing barbecue editor for Southern Living, that pimento cheese did not originate in the South at all. It was a late-nineteenth-century New York creation that, in its original form, involved cream cheese mixed with canned pimentos. But it was the Southerners who replaced the cream cheese with cheddar and introduced mayonnaise to bind it to the pimentos, thus creating the pimento cheese we know today.
"Is pimento cheese meant strictly to be a sandwich spread, or can it serve as a dip? Also, is it comfort food, to be indulged in liberally, or a snack to tide one over? Is it a workingman’s easy, cheap lunch or does the snobbery it occasionally inspires point to a more highfalutin’ spirit? Most importantly, is the formal three-ingredient recipe to be followed like a religion, or can it serve as a base for exciting additions like, say, sliced jalapeños and green onions?"
Second, I came to see that my parents grew up in Mississippi kitchens of opposing cultures. My maternal grandmother, a rather passionate pimento cheese fan, is a native of the Piney Woods, a part of the state with poor soil—which means her ancestors made a living by raising livestock on small farms. It was a life of hard work and few leisurely pursuits. The culture my grandmother inherited, and passed to my mother, would have viewed pimento cheese as something to place in the middle of a plate, as an entree, utilitarian nourishment. My paternal grandmother, in contrast, was a Delta native. While her family was blue-collar, that soil-rich region’s culture has always contained a strain of planter class tastes and style, meaning proper entertaining involves hors d'oeuvres, which pimento cheese can qualify as—so long as it's appropriately gussied up. My grandmother passed this approach to my father.
At some point I learned that my mother actually despises pimento, and my stepdad does not eat cheese. I suddenly realized that I was the only person in that household to ever consume the store-bought pimento cheese they kept around. This explains a lot, to say the least.
As time revealed these factors and histories to me, my once-uneasy relationship with pimento cheese was replaced with a more tasteful understanding. Pimento cheese is not a Southern invention, but it is certainly a Southern creation, one with core ingredients that should be respected, but can be molded to fit your tastes and consumed as you like. My wife and I like to whip up a batch and throw it in a cooler for summer road trips, eating it on sandwiches along the way. She likes more mayonnaise than I do, but I eat it anyway. I do so in my hard-earned, pimento cheese peace.
I will add that we plan to pass these tenets to our four-year-old Mississippi-born son. I hope he always knows to avoid store-bought varieties at all costs; to always feel free to eat it on a sandwich, as a dip, or any other way he may like; and to always follow Papa Browning’s recipe, for it is the best.
There’s just one hurdle: my son doesn’t like cheese.
