[HN Gopher] The Masters pimento cheese sandwich scandal ___________________________________________________________________ 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. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-04-12 23:00 UTC)