What is a pimento and why is it in my olive?
Great question — that sweet red blotch inside a tart green olive has always been a puzzler. To answer part one of your question, we headed straight for Epicurious.com, where we found the following definition: pimiento; pimento A large, red, heart-shaped sweet pepper that measures 3 to 4 inches long and 2 to 3 inches wide. The flesh of the pimiento (the Spanish word for “pepper”) is sweet, succulent and more aromatic than that of the red bell pepper… Pimientos are the familiar red stuffing found in green olives. Armed with a new appreciation for sweet peppers, we entered “olive + pimento” and “olive history” in the Yahoo! search box, hoping to answer the second part of your question. We couldn’t find a specific reason as to where or why the practice of stuffing olives with pimentos started, but we did find some interesting facts about olive
