By , at least five companies were making Neufchatel in New York state, and they introduced several variations, including cream cheese, which soon eclipsed the popularity of the original. In , the Phenix Cheese company of New York City bought the trademark for Philadelphia Brand Cream Cheese, and after the company merged with the Kraft Cheese Company in it became the country's top-selling brand.
Cream cheese is just one half of the story. The other is pimento peppers. Through most of the 19th century, the word pimento meant allspice, the unripe berries of the Eugenia Pimenta evergreen from Jamaica and the West Indies. Thomas Jefferson Murrey, one of the most popular cookbook authors of the era, was a proponent of the sweet pepper, too, incorporating it into recipes for salmon a la Creole, boiled beef salad, and omelet with Spanish pepper.
In the late s, imported Spanish sweet peppers started being canned and sold by large food manufacturers, which not only boosted their popularity but also introduced the Spanish name pimiento. Cream cheese and red pimento peppers hit the market just as a powerful new force was rising in American culinary life: Domestic Science. And that included bringing pimento cheese to the South.
They were soft and mildly flavored, and their clean white color connoted purity. That they were something new and sold by modern food manufacturers only added appeal, for the Domestic Scientists were passionate advocates for modern industrial canning and food packaging.
Cookbook writers and journalists folded the soft white cheese into all sorts of those innovative new recipes for salads and hors d'oeuvres that today make our stomachs churn.
They rolled it into balls to serve in lettuce cups, wrapped it in slices of dried beef, and combined it with nuts or herbs for stuffing into celery sticks and hollowed out radishes. Canned pimentos were ideal for the scientific kitchen, too. Their mild, sweet flavor was inoffensive and unlikely to stir the baser appetites and, since the presentation of food mattered as much or more to the Domestic Scientists as taste, their flashy red color was perfect for brightening up a plate. Canned vegetables were still expensive luxuries at the time, connoting elegance and sophistication, so tins of imported Spanish peppers held a particular cachet.
The Up-to-Date Sandwich Book It seems almost inevitable that these two favorites of domestic scientists would be brought together. A decade later, Jane Hegner's Good Housekeeping article described sandwiches made with a spread of soft cream cheese with mustard, chives, and minced pimento mixed in. Spread on thin slices of lightly buttered white bread.
It wasn't long before dairy manufacturers discovered that pimento cheese was a great way to extend their product lines. They experimented with plenty of other additions to Neufchatel curd, like olives and chopped nuts, but none took hold as firmly as pimento cheese. To make it, they ran pimentos through a mechanical chopper and mixed them into Neufchatel curd along with a pinch of red pepper just before the cheese was molded. Producers initially sold pimento cheese wrapped in parchment and tinfoil, just as they did plain Neufchatel or cream cheese.
But, the product didn't stay fresh very long, and they soon switched to packing the cheese in three- or four-ounce glass jars with screw tops, which both extended the shelf life and let purchasers leave the jars out on their tables as serving containers. Its story is one of redemption, of a wayward factory child adopted by a good Southern family, scrubbed up nice, and invited to Sunday dinner.
Almost any pimento cheese recipe today calls for grated cheddar or a similarly firm cheese mixed with diced pimento peppers, mayonnaise, and any number of seasonings and special ingredients. Many cooks are quite adamant that you use homemade mayonnaise, while others start with fresh red peppers and roast them themselves.
The original version started out as something quite different: the marriage of cream cheese and canned pimentos, two popular and newly-available products of the industrial food trade.
Though produced primarily in New York, cream cheese somehow became linked with the city of Philadelphia, and the New York-based Phenix Cheese became the market leader with its "Philadelphia Brand Cream Cheese," which was later acquired by the Kraft Cheese Company. Around the same time, sweet red peppers imported from Spain first became available in the Americas. In the edition of Miss Parloa's Kitchen Companion , Maria Parloa noted that these peppers, when green, are "much milder than the common bell-pepper, although they look so much alike it is often difficult to distinguish them.
Within a decade, imported Spanish peppers were being canned and sold by large food manufacturers, which not only boosted their popularity but also introduced the Spanish name pimiento. By the turn of the century most print source had dropped the "i" and were calling the peppers "pimentos.
These two new, up-to-date products—cream cheese and red pimentos—were favorites of the practitioners of Domestic Science. Also known as "home economics," it was a women-led social reform movement that sought to bring order and scientific precision to all aspects of the home, with a particular emphasis on scientific cooking and a neat dinner table. Cream cheese was the perfect food for the Domestic Science sensibility.
It was soft and mildly flavored, and its clean white color connoted purity. That it was something new and sold by modern food manufacturers only added appeal, for the Domestic Scientists were champions of industrial canning and scientific food packaging. Before long, they were devising any number of inventive ways to incorporate cream cheese into salads and hors d'oeuvres: rolling it into balls to serve in lettuce cups or combining it with nuts or herbs, and stuffing it into celery sticks and hollowed radishes.
The Domestic Scientists loved canned pimentos, too, especially their mild, inoffensive flavor and their flashy red color. In , the editors of the Boston Cooking-School Magazine included a cauliflower and pimento salad on their Monday dinner menu for August, noting that, "on account of their brilliant color, pimentos are a pleasing addition to many a salad, and when used sparingly their sweet, mild flavor is usually relished.
It was only a matter of time before the two ingredients were brought together. In , an article in Good Housekeeping recommended sandwiches filled with a blend of soft cream cheese, mustard, chives, and minced pimentos. The following year, Eva Green Fuller's Up-to-Date Sandwich Book presented a more basic version of the pimento cheese sandwich: "Grind two small cans of pimentos with two cakes of Neufchatel cheese, and season with a little salt.
Spread on thin slices of lightly buttered white bread. It wasn't long before cheese manufacturers decided to save consumers some trouble and flavor their cheese in the factory.
They ran pimentos through a mechanical chopper then mixed them into Neufchatel curd along with a pinch of red pepper just before the cheese was molded. Commercially-made pimento cheese burst on the market around and spread quickly across the country.
In March , grocers in Minnesota were advertising "Pimiento Cheese—Something New," and by April papers in North Dakota were running ads offering "Pimento cheese, something new, per jar. Most of the manufacturers appear to have been based in New York or Wisconsin. The South may not have invented pimento cheese, but it did become the center of the nation's pimento growing and canning industry.
Around , when imported Spanish pimentos were an expensive but in-demand delicacy, farmers affiliated with the Georgia Experiment Station outside of Griffin, Georgia, began cultivating domestic pimentos. They developed the "Truhart Perfection" pimento and inventing a roasting machine that made peeling the peppers easier. By the s, a flourishing pimento industry had developed in and around Griffin. The country's largest packer, Pomona Products Company of Griffin, was producing 10 million cans of pimentos per year.
Some have suggested that Georgia's huge pimento production was the reason that pimento cheese became much more popular in the South than elsewhere in the country. Password recovery. Forgot your password? Get help. Create an account. Atlanta Magazine. Recipes vary from chef to chef and from household to household, but three ingredients are constant: shredded cheese usually cheddar , diced pimento peppers, and mayonnaise, as well as some sort of seasoning, which runs the gamut from onion powder to cayenne pepper.
After eating your fill, try your hand at the pimento cheese—sculpting contest.
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