[HN Gopher] The Masters pimento cheese sandwich scandal
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The Masters pimento cheese sandwich scandal
Author : ecliptik
Score : 63 points
Date : 2021-04-11 14:50 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.atlasobscura.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.atlasobscura.com)
| brudgers wrote:
| Ever masters of the media, we are led to believe pimento cheese
| is the most important policy scandal of Grand National's history.
| antiterra wrote:
| 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...
| tptacek wrote:
| 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.
| jessaustin wrote:
| The American preference for white bread continues to astound
| me. Pimentos, cheese, and mayonnaise would be better on
| literally any other bread.
| ProAm wrote:
| All bread is gross.
| [deleted]
| m463 wrote:
| Now if I could only figure out the recipe for the pimento taco --
| "a Pimentaco" -- in the glovebox
| mistrial9 wrote:
| side-note .. one of the largest USA non-profit frauds in American
| history was largely arranged over a week or so at a Playboy-
| sponsored Golf Tournament. As I recall, a new US Federal
| appointee under a Bush administration was put in charge of
| Federal Housing subsidy funds (you know, to keep people in homes
| while making modest money on the money) and instead, they
| siphoned off large amounts of it, and were caught. (details on
| request)
| kyleblarson wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| > 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.
| gnu8 wrote:
| It is not a club I would care to be a member of in any case,
| given their history of excluding women and minorities.
| Simulacra wrote:
| 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.
| deanCommie wrote:
| America in a nutshell.
|
| Sorry if that offends anyone, but that is the epitome of
| American culture and what it does to EVERYTHING - it overly
| commercializes absolutely anything worth commercializing.
| dang wrote:
| Would you please stop breaking the HN guidelines with
| flamewar comments? That's not what this site is for. We've
| asked you repeatedly and you've still been doing it. We ban
| such accounts, so please review
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and fix
| this.
|
| Nationalistic and/or ideological battle comments are
| particularly harmful in the way they degrade the threads.
| jasonpeacock wrote:
| 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.
| listenallyall wrote:
| 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.
| jerf wrote:
| "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.
| chiph wrote:
| Tickets are probably easier to come by these days (COVID
| notwithstanding), but it's probably still not "easy" to get
| them.
|
| Augusta National probably still has a policy [0] that if a
| spectator misbehaves in some fashion, they will trace the
| ticket back to the person who first acquired it, and ban
| them from future ticket sales. This is why you don't hear
| people yelling "git it!" at the tee or wearing brightly
| colored wigs [1] during the event - they get dis-invited
| and escorted off the property.
|
| [0] Mom & Dad used to go back in the 1970's, using borrowed
| tickets. After he retired he lost his connection for
| getting them. They always ate the pimento-cheese
| sandwiches, and loved them.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rollen_Stewart -- who is
| still serving three life sentences in prison.
| thelean12 wrote:
| 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.
| ksdale wrote:
| 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.
| francisofascii wrote:
| 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.
| owlninja wrote:
| 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.
| ghaff wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Is it perhaps just the natural lifecycle of events? An
| evolution from a joke to quaint to corporate to decline
| ghaff wrote:
| Lifecycles vary but that's probably a reasonable
| description for a lot of events. Certainly, once an event
| is very corporate there are a lot of forces acting to keep
| it going long past its sell-by date.
|
| That said, long-lived events can stay volunteer efforts.
| bbharman wrote:
| 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
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| _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.
| javert wrote:
| > 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.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| 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.
| wil421 wrote:
| 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.
| crazygringo wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| geoah wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| BobBagwill wrote:
| And test the recipe with relatively unskilled staff. No
| proper chef would ever reveal the _real_ recipe. :-)
| tacker2000 wrote:
| True! At least they kept some sandwiches in the freezer to
| reverse engineer later
| tantalor wrote:
| 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.
| tzs wrote:
| In the case of the original sandwich maker, Rangos, clearly
| not. He was making his pimento cheese and selling it in his
| store before the Masters ever hired him.
|
| In the case of the second sandwich maker, Godfrey, who
| replaced Rangos and developed his pimento cheese recipe for
| the Masters, probably not.
|
| First of all, work for hire concerns who owns the copyright
| to something and recipes are not subject to copyright.
|
| It is possible, though, that there is some expression in
| the way that he wrote the recipe that could be copyrighted,
| so let's say the Masters wants to make a work for hire
| argument that they own the copyright of that.
|
| To be a work for hire, something must either be (1) made by
| an employee within the scope of their employment, or (2)
| fall into one of several categories _and_ be declared a
| work for hire by the parties in a written instrument signed
| by them.
|
| It doesn't sound like the pimento cheese provider is an
| employee of the Masters. He sounds more like a contractor.
| That would take out #1 of the two ways something could be a
| work for hire.
|
| As far as #2 goes, first they have to explicitly have said
| in their signed written contract that the expression of the
| recipe will be a work for hire. That seems unlikely.
|
| But let us say they did, and let us assume that the
| particular expression of the recipe counts as an
| instructional text. Let's say that means that the Masters
| owns the copyright on that particular expression of the
| underlying, uncopyrighted, recipe.
|
| So what?
|
| That just means they get to stop people from making and
| distributing copies of that text. It doesn't give them any
| power to compel someone who has a copy to turn it (or a
| copy of it) over to them.
| bombcar wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| jasonpeacock wrote:
| The bane of every HW engineer, when "like" parts are
| substituted by the manufacturer...
| wiredfool wrote:
| That's basically the entire point of atlas obscura.
| technofiend wrote:
| 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/
| mjcarroll wrote:
| 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...
| technofiend wrote:
| Yikes! Thanks for the heads up; if it isn't on NPR or
| hacker news I'm pretty oblivious.
| gabagool wrote:
| How does it compare?
| chiph wrote:
| That's sad to hear - it is pretty tasty. I think I have
| seen it at Sam's Club.
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