The Masters pimento cheese sandwich scandal

https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/masters-pimento-cheese-sandwich

by ecliptik • 5 years ago

122 80 5 years ago

geoah• 5 years ago

I honestly don’t know what to make of this article. Interesting story of something completely unimportant. There is a recipe for said sandwiches at the end which I will try out.

exhilaration• 5 years ago

I think the lesson for HN readers is that if you're going to fire your best talent, make sure they document everything well ahead of time.

tacker2000• 5 years ago

True! At least they kept some sandwiches in the freezer to reverse engineer later

tantalor• 5 years ago

It's more like source code, but anyway the vendor was presumably under contract which did not include divulging the recipe.

I wonder if they could have sued to recover the recipe as a "work for hire", where typically the employer is the owner of the work product. The law covers "instructional text" which sounds like a recipe to me.

https://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ09.pdf

It depends on the nature of the original agreement, whether the recipe was created especially and exclusively for the event, or the vendor developed it on their own time.

BobBagwill• 5 years ago

And test the recipe with relatively unskilled staff. No proper chef would ever reveal the real recipe. :-)

bombcar• 5 years ago

If it wasn't for knowing the website I'd call it standard recipe blog spam - but it's an interesting read.

I suspect that the secret isn't the ingredients but instead how it's made - and the way the cheese is handled may be it.

kQq9oHeAz6wLLS• 5 years ago

It could even be specific sources of the ingredients that lend to the secret. It's all well and good to get the exact recipe and even detailed instructions, but if the ingredients are sourced from a different place, it won't quite be the same.

wiredfool• 5 years ago

That's basically the entire point of atlas obscura.

technofiend2• 5 years ago

If you're just looking for a good pimento cheese spread, go to Costco and get the Palmetto original flavor.

https://www.pimentocheese.com/palmetto-cheese-12-oz/

mjcarroll2• 5 years ago

Palmetto is no longer available at Costco. Some have attributed it to the founder (and mayor of Pawley's Island) making some less-than-tasteful comments about BLM protests in a neighboring city. I don't know that Costco ever officially confirmed that, though. Source: https://news.yahoo.com/costco-pulls-palmetto-cheese-120-1534...

Our local Costco has started carrying "Taste of the South" brand pimento cheese: https://www.costcobusinessdelivery.com/taste-of-the-south-lo...

Simulacra• 5 years ago

I was lucky enough to go to the Masters in 1999, and 2014 and the change was remarkable. The 1999 course was very quaint and secluded, with the facilities mostly temporary structures. You parked in peoples front yards for $25 a day, and yes the food was great, yet cheap. Fast forward to 2014 and it's like the place had become a major sports park. Suddenly the houses are gone and you're parking in a huge field, going through metal detectors, large cafeterias, even a hotel has sprung up. What I liked about the 1999 course was how much it wasn't commercialized. In 2014 it felt overly commercialized, but I guess that's how they make money.

ksdale2• 5 years ago

This is interesting to hear! They have multiple streams of the tournament on their website, including the TV broadcast, and the fact that they didn't charge for it always felt awesome to me. A few years ago, I was struck by how few commercials there were on the stream, but this year they were much more noticeable.

I wonder where they'll settle as far as commercialization.

owlninja• 5 years ago

Yea the Masters seems like the least commercialized event in all of major sports. They do a lot of unorthodox things to build that brand/mystique.

francisofascii2• 5 years ago

Also, the Masters phone app is wonderful compared to other sports apps and virtually ad free. (You will see IBM, AT&T logo in the top right, but it is barely noticeable.) You can see every shot, videos, live coverage, interviews. Just a joy to use.

pumaontheprowl• 5 years ago

Augusta National was purpose-built to host a major golf championship. However, when the USGA rejected the course as a candidate for the US Open due to the summer heat in Georgia, they decided to make their own major instead. They were successful in this because they invited a small field of only the world's most elite golfers, put together one of the largest prize pools in golf, and made the event extremely welcoming to fans. The inexpensive food sold on the grounds is one of the most well-known examples of this last point, but the limited advertising during television/radio broadcasts is another key component of the fan experience that vaulted the Masters to worldwide prestige.

Given that Augusta National is one of the most tradition-oriented places in the world, I doubt they will ever allow their broadcasting partners to significantly increase the volume of commercials. The leadership of Augusta National are firm believers in the adage "don't fix what isn't broken."

And to be frank, if you watched this week's broadcast and thought they showed a lot of commercials, then you haven't watched golf on television this year. I'd estimate the volume of commercials was probably a quarter of that shown for a regular PGA tour event.

ghaff2• 5 years ago

It's happened to greater or lesser degrees with a lot of events. The Head of the Charles (big rowing event in Cambridge MA) is still fairly casual with people watching from bridges and along the rivers. But it's commercialized a lot in the past 20 or 25 years.

There are now a ton of sponsor booths on the Cambridge side of the river. And rather than groups from colleges setting up wherever, they're now in a big roped off area on the Boston side.

colechristensen• 5 years ago

Is it perhaps just the natural lifecycle of events? An evolution from a joke to quaint to corporate to decline

bbharman• 5 years ago

I attended in 2012. I found it amazing to be part of a huge crowd where nobody was allowed to even carry a phone in their pocket

jasonpeacock2• 5 years ago

It's sad, because it doesn't have to be commercialized. That same event from 1999 is still entirely doable, but someone decided that profits must be made, as opposed to hosting a challenging competition of the sport's top players.

jerf• 5 years ago

"That same event from 1999 is still entirely doable"

For better or worse, no it's not. If you tried to have the same event today, it would be flooded with far more people than were there in 1999. Demand has gone up. Some of the mentioned changes are just to accommodate that; for instance, as more people show up, you're going to need more security because the odds of someone needing to be removed go steadily up.

listenallyall3• 5 years ago

You don't know anything about Augusta National or the Masters. It is most certainly a "challenging competition of the sport's top players," in fact it is likely the most coveted tournament by any pro golfer, and the Green Jacket is recognized worldwide. As far as commercialization, Augusta National could auction TV rights to the highest bidder, but it doesn't. It could sell VIP experiences, or skyboxes, or reserved seating, but it doesn't. It could charge $10 for a sandwich, but it doesn't. It could allow corporations to plaster their name all over the course, but it doesn't. It could sell official merchandise in retail stores or on the internet, but it doesn't. It could allow its TV partners to run the typical allotment of commercials per hour, but it doesn't. It could license its brands (either Augusta National, The Masters, Amen Corner, Unlike Any Other, etc) to golf courses around the world (like TPC) but it doesn't. It could leave amateur golf to the USGA or other organizations, but it doesn't... I could go on.

thelean12• 5 years ago

Overly commercialized is a strange way to put it. It's certainly the least commercialized of all the major golf tournaments. Daily tickets are the cheapest at $115. Food is incredibly inexpensive. And you can watch at home for free, with probably the best coverage of any tournament, on their website.

jp_nc• 5 years ago

Not to mention nothing is branded. You don’t buy a Coke, you buy cola. It’s not Powerade but sports drink. Beer is domestic or import.

tptacek2• 5 years ago

The ingredient list on the sandwich label doesn't leave a lot of room for secret ingredients; it's just cheese (american and swiss), cream, emulsifiers, lactic acid and pimento, plus the white bread and mayonnaise.

jessaustin2• 5 years ago

The American preference for white bread continues to astound me. Pimentos, cheese, and mayonnaise would be better on literally any other bread.

dsr_2• 5 years ago

Matters of taste are not debatable: they just exist.

There are many gradations of white sandwich bread, though. There is little beneath Wonder Bread, but that space does exist. Above it: some store brands, Pepperidge Farm, and then some ways up, Arnold's Country White (which is itself at the bottom of Arnold's pale offerings: the Italian is a nice step up, and then their Sourdough, while not holding a candle to a fresh-baked loaf from any reasonable establishment, exceeds that by far).

Other parts of the US may have their own challengers at any step of the ladder.

tingletech• 5 years ago

Have you ever had one? It works on these as well if not better than the little cucumber sandwiches at a high tea.

tptacek2• 5 years ago

Japan likes it a lot too.

kyleblarson2• 5 years ago

If you actually get invited to join, Augusta is also materially less expensive than most ultra exclusive golf clubs. https://www.liveabout.com/augusta-national-membership-156354...

paxys• 5 years ago

If you actually get invited to join

being the key part. Augusta has 300 members. Rest assured you won't be one of them even if you manage to scrape together the initiation fee.

gnu82• 5 years ago

It is not a club I would care to be a member of in any case, given their history of excluding women and minorities.

DoreenMichele3• 5 years ago

What we do have, however, is a lifelong Masters patron and Augusta food blogger who wasn’t above reverse-engineering the ingredients list from the back of the wrapper in 2016. It’s an imitation of an imitation of an approximation...

That's such a delightful description.

When a new building is constructed, he says, it simply appears the day of the tournament’s opening, already inexplicably covered in vines.

(Insert joke about how fast kudzu grows -- This is Georgia, after all.)

The pimento cheese he sold from his store, Woodruff Drug in Aiken, South Carolina, won so many fans across the region that in the 1960s, Masters organizers dropped the husband-and-wife catering team they’d hired since the 1940s to make way for Rangos.

For those not familiar with the area, Augusta is in Georgia and smooshed up against the Georgia-South Carolina state border. Aiken, South Carolina is about 20 miles away, about a thirty minute drive to some parts of Augusta. Augusta is a sprawling city. You can probably drive thirty minutes from point A to point B within Augusta, so reaching out to a unique business in a small town a few miles away is completely reasonable and not some big huge deal, logistically.

Not to take anything away from the small business, just saying that "going to a whole other state!!!" is like tossing a rock across the river in this case, because some river no doubt serves as the demarcation for the state border.

javert2• 5 years ago

tossing a rock across the river

Rivers can be miles wide. That's actually the norm in a lot of people's experiences.

Where I am from, "tossing a rock across the river" would be taken to mean something that's impossible.

wil421• 5 years ago

OP used his own version of a stone’s throw away. It’s farther away than a Hop, Skip, and, a Jump but not as close as spitting distance.

Still not sure if a Hop, Skip, and a Jump is closer or father away than something you wouldn’t touch with a 10 foot pole.

DoreenMichele3• 5 years ago

https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/201...

https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/34400/how-... -- Potentially 60 miles, if you consider The Florida Everglades to be a slow moving river.

https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Average-water-depth-m-an... This site lists 30m as "average" for river width. No clue what rivers they were measuring.

https://opb.pbslearningmedia.org/resource/buac35-sci-riverwi...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/River

It seems there is no readily available canned answer for average river width and I've already grown bored with this rabbit hole. Note to self: Vernacular measures unwelcome on HN.

benatkin• 5 years ago

What you often see about really wide rivers:

Depending on the geographer, the Río de la Plata may be considered a river, an estuary, a gulf, or a marginal sea.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R%C3%ADo_de_la_Plata

Fine to assume the river isn't miles wide.

crazygringo• 5 years ago

So was the secret ingredient... the tiny amount of finely minced fresh onion?

Looking at the final recipe they came up with, that's the only one that seems like you might not guess.

Garlic powder is the only other non-standard ingredient, but I feel like whenever you're looking for the "missing secret ingredient" in a savory dish, garlic powder, onion powder and mustard powder are the first things you'd think of, along with MSG and very occasionally nutmeg or pickles/pickle juice. (While paprika can only be secret in darkly colored dishes, otherwise you can see its specks.)

Shivetya• 5 years ago

freshly minced onion does wonders in more than a few recipes, it certainly can add that final kick to tartar sauce if not any recipe with a good creamy base. you don't even need to add much.

stock_toaster• 5 years ago

Maybe it was Silphium? ;)

humanrebar• 5 years ago

Nutritional yeast can also sneak in a lot of hard-to-place flavor, but given the dates, it doesn't seem to be a good candidate here.

jzl• 5 years ago

I think the point of that quote from the guy is that he realized what it was but he's not ever going to tell. The recipe in the article is the guessed one not the secret one.

brudgers2• 5 years ago

Ever masters of the media, we are led to believe pimento cheese is the most important policy scandal of Grand National’s history.

antiterra• 5 years ago

You maybe missed the ‘obscura’ part of Atlas Obscura?

I do think they could have spent a sentence or two on the racism of the place, considering they openly had policies against black membership far more recently than similar institutions. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/04/08/masters-t...

brudgers2• 5 years ago

I didn't miss anything.

Usually it shines light.

Here it obscures.

Here it waxes about the magic of southern traditions.

It speaks bullshit to non-power.

m463• 5 years ago

Now if I could only figure out the recipe for the pimento taco -- "a Pimentaco" -- in the glovebox

hammock• 5 years ago

If you are in the South, pick up a container of Palmetto cheese from the grocery store. That's my favorite pimento cheese. I eat it with Triscuit Thin Crisps.

I have yet to have a "pimento cheese" at a restaurant that was actually any good.

partiallypro• 5 years ago

Palmetto is an amazing brand, the jalapeño version is incredible. I add it to burgers, sandwiches, etc.

RavingGoat• 5 years ago

Sadly, the owner of Palmetto cheese is a douchebag. Just google Sean Brocks pimento cheese recipe. Best recipe out there.

40four2• 5 years ago

I love golf, and I love the Masters! To me, it has always been the unofficial ‘start of spring’. Congrats to Mr. Matsuyama on his victory this year!

What a great story! Notice the prices of the concessions. They are only trying to break even at best, probably lose money. I still haven’t been in person, but these stories are legendary.

This is one of the reasons it is considered the best pro sports event you can attend. Doesn’t matter if your a golf fan or not.

You will enjoy the day walking around one of the most beautiful and pristinely manicured properties in the world. I dare you to find a blade of grass, or needle of pine straw, that is out of place!

You will be treated like you’re worth something. You’re a ‘patron’ gosh darn it! Not just some shlub who scalped a ticket.

Concessions and souvenirs are cheap. Augusta National is not there to gouge you for $12 beers and burgers like every other pro sports event in the world.

They are there to host the greatest golf tournament in the world, and e sure every patron has a fantastic experience. It’s an ethos really. And the their way of doing things has become legendary. Long live The Masters!

chihuahua2• 5 years ago

How difficult or expensive is it to get tickets?

When I was more interested in golf, I used to love watching the Masters on TV. The organizers limit the amount of ads the network can insert so it's much less annoying than regular TV. Very calming and beautiful to look at.

dpeck2• 5 years ago

There’s a lottery where you can get them basically free.

The members of The National, and the club itself don’t need the money.

listenallyall3• 5 years ago

If you can actually get a badge (not tickets) directly from Augusta National (likely via the lottery), it costs $115. If you're a random person trying to buy one on Stubhub, prepare to pay $6000+.

https://golf.com/news/tournaments/2019-masters-tickets-absur...

theluketaylor2• 5 years ago

It used to be far, far easier to get in, but demand now is through the roof. At least the lottery means bots don't snap up all the tickets and if you win the tickets are cheap. My grandparents went all the time during the 80s and 90s and we have a closet full of masters hats and chairs as evidence.

If you don't win the lottery there are tour packages where you get guaranteed tickets. Expensive, but not really beyond what superbowl, world series or other really big events can cost.

https://www.yourgolftravel.com/tournaments/the-masters-2022

dpeck2• 5 years ago

true on the concessions, not quite as true on the souvenirs. I got to go to the kids drive-chip-putt competition a few years ago. The branded shirts, blankets, bags, etc all go for quite a premium and people love buying them anyway.

It is a very well put on event though, and it brings an absurd amount of money into the Augusta area. Many businesses make another month of revenue during Masters week and a lot of residents rent out their homes for several times their mortgage payment.

40four2• 5 years ago

Ahh, fair enough on the souvenirs, didn’t know.

The Masters pimento cheese sandwich scandal

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