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Black pepper
(Piper nigrum) is a flowering vine in the
family Piperaceae, cultivated for its fruit,
which is usually dried and used as a spice
and seasoning. The same fruit is also used
to produce white pepper and green pepper.
Black pepper is native to South India and is
extensively cultivated there and elsewhere
in tropical regions. The fruit, known as a
peppercorn when dried, is a small drupe five
millimeters in diameter, dark red when fully
mature, containing a single seed.
Dried, ground
pepper is one of the most common spices in
European cuisine and its descendants, having
been known and prized since antiquity for
both its flavor and its use as a medicine.
The spiciness of black pepper is due to the
chemical piperine. Ground black
peppercorn, usually referred to simply as
"pepper", may be found on nearly every
dinner table in some parts of the world,
often alongside table salt.
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The word
pepper is derived from the Sanskrit pippali
[2], via the Latin piper and Old English
pipor. The Latin word is also the source of
German pfeffer, French poivre, Dutch peper,
and other similar forms. In the 16th
century, pepper started referring to New
World chile peppers as well. Pepper was used
in a figurative sense meaning "spirit" or
"energy" at least as far back as the 1840s;
in the early 20th century, this was
shortened to pep.
Black
pepper is produced from the still-green
unripe berries of the pepper plant. The
berries are cooked briefly in hot water,
both to clean them and to prepare them for
drying. The heat ruptures cell walls in the
fruit, speeding the work of browning enzymes
during drying. The berries are dried in the
sun or by machine for several days, during
which the fruit around the seed shrinks and
darkens into a thin, wrinkled black layer
around the seed. Once dried, the fruits are
called black peppercorns. |
Matzah Ball Salt and Pepper Shakers |
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White pepper
consists of the seed only, with the fruit
removed. This is usually accomplished by
allowing fully ripe berries to soak in water
for about a week, during which time the
flesh of the fruit softens and decomposes.
Rubbing then removes what remains of the
fruit, and the naked seed is dried.
Alternative processes are used for removing
the outer fruit from the seed, including
removal of the outer layer from black pepper
produced from unripe berries.
Black pepper is the most common, while white
pepper is mainly used in dishes like
light-colored sauces or mashed potatoes,
where ground black pepper would visibly
stand out. There is disagreement regarding
which is generally spicier. They do have
differing flavors due to the presence of
certain compounds in the outer fruit layer
of the berry that are not found in the seed.
Green pepper, like black, is made from the
unripe berries. Dried green peppercorns are
treated in a manner that retains the green
color, such as treatment with sulfur dioxide
or freeze-drying. Pickled peppercorns, also
green, are unripe berries preserved in brine
or vinegar. Fresh, unpreserved green pepper
berries, largely unknown in the West, are
used in some Asian cuisines, particularly
Thai cuisine.[4] Their flavor has been
described as piquant and fresh, with a
bright aroma.[5] They decay quickly if not
dried or preserved.
A rarely seen product called pink pepper
consists of ripe red pepper berries
preserved in brine and vinegar. This pink
pepper is different from the more-common
dried "pink peppercorns", which are the
fruits of a plant from a different family,
the Peruvian pepper tree, Schinus molle, and
its relative the Brazilian pepper tree,
Schinus terebinthifolius.
Peppercorns are often categorized under a
label describing their region or port of
origin. Two well-known types come from
India's Malabar Coast: Malabar pepper and
Tellicherry pepper. Tellicherry is
purportedly a higher-grade pepper, made from
larger, riper berries. Sarawak pepper is
produced in the Malaysian portion of Borneo,
and Lampong pepper on Indonesia's island of
Sumatra. White Muntok pepper is another
Indonesian product, from Bangka Island.
The pepper plant
The pepper plant is a perennial woody vine
growing to four meters in height on
supporting trees, poles, or trellises. It is
a spreading vine, rooting readily where
trailing stems touch the ground. The leaves
are alternate, entire, five to ten
centimeters long and three to six
centimeters broad. The flowers are small,
produced on pendulous spikes four to eight
centimeters long at the leaf nodes, the
spikes lengthening to seven to 15
centimeters as the fruit matures.
Black pepper is grown in soil that is
neither too dry nor susceptible to flooding,
is moist, well-drained and rich in organic
matter. The plants are propagated by
cuttings about 40 to 50 centimeters long,
tied up to neighboring trees or climbing
frames at distances of about two meters
apart; trees with rough bark are favored
over those with smooth bark, as the pepper
plants climb rough bark more readily.
Competing plants are cleared away, leaving
only sufficient trees to provide shade and
permit free ventilation. The roots are
covered in leaf mulch and manure, and the
shoots are trimmed twice a year. On dry
soils the young plants require watering
every other day during the dry season for
the first three years. The plants bear fruit
from the fourth or fifth year, and typically
continue to bear fruit for seven years. The
cuttings are usually cultivars, selected
both for yield and quality of fruit.
A single stem will bear 20 to 30 fruiting
spikes. The harvest begins as soon as one or
two berries at the base of the spikes begin
to turn red, and before the fruit is mature,
but when full grown and still hard; if
allowed to ripen, the berries lose pungency,
and ultimately fall off and are lost. The
spikes are collected in bags or baskets and
then spread out to dry in the sun, and the
peppercorns then stripped off the spikes.
History
Pepper has been used as a spice in India
since prehistoric times. It was probably
first cultivated on the Malabar coast of
India, in what is now the state of Kerala.
Peppercorns were a much prized commodity,
often referred to as black gold and used as
a form of money. The term peppercorn rent
still exists today.
The ancient history of black pepper is often
interlinked with (and confused with) that of
long pepper, the dried fruit of closely
related Piper longum. The Romans knew of
both and often referred to either as just
"piper". In fact, it was not until the
discovery of the New World and of chile
peppers that the popularity of long pepper
entirely declined. Chile peppers, some of
which when dried are similar in shape and
taste to long pepper, were easier to grow in
a variety of locations more convenient to
Europe.
Until well after the Middle Ages, virtually
all of the black pepper found in Europe, the
Middle East, and North Africa traveled there
from India's Malabar region. By the 16th
century, pepper was also being grown in
Java, Sunda, Sumatra, Madagascar, Malaysia,
and elsewhere in Southeast Asia, but these
areas traded mainly with China, or used the
pepper locally.[7] Ports in the Malabar area
also served as a stop-off point for much of
the trade in other spices from farther east
in the Indian Ocean.
Ancient times
Black peppercorns were found lodged in the
nostrils of Remises II, placed there as part
of his mummification rituals shortly after
his death in 1213 BCE. Little else is known
about the use of pepper in ancient Egypt,
nor how it reached the Nile from India.
Pepper (both long and black) was known in
Greece at least as early as the 4th century
BCE, though it was probably an uncommon and
expensive item that only the very rich could
afford. Trade routes of the time were by
land, or in ships which hugged the
coastlines of the Arabian Sea. Long pepper,
growing in the north-western part of India,
was more accessible than the black pepper
from further south; this trade advantage,
plus long pepper's greater spiciness,
probably made black pepper less popular at
the time.
By the time of the early Roman Empire —
especially after Rome's conquest of Egypt in
30 BCE — open-ocean crossing of the Arabian
Sea directly to southern India's Malabar
Coast was near routine. Details of this
trading across the Indian Ocean have been
passed down in the Periplus of the
Erythraean Sea. According to the Roman
geographer Strabo, the early Empire sent a
fleet of around 120 ships on an annual
one-year trip to India and back. The fleet
timed its travel across the Arabian Sea to
take advantage of the predictable monsoon
winds. Returning from India, the ships
traveled up the Red Sea, from where the
cargo was carried overland or via the Nile
Canal to the Nile River, barged to
Alexandria, and shipped from there to Italy
and Rome. The rough geographical outlines of
this same trade route would dominate the
pepper trade into Europe for a millennium
and a half to come.
With ships sailing directly to the Malabar
coast, black pepper was now traveling a
shorter trade route than long pepper, and
the prices reflected it. Pliny the Elder's
Natural History tells us the prices in Rome
around 77 CE: "Long pepper ... is fifteen
denarii per pound, while that of white
pepper is seven, and of black, four." Pliny
also complains "there is no year in which
India does not drain the Roman Empire of
fifty million sesterces," and further
moralises on pepper:
It is quite surprising that the use of
pepper has come so much into fashion, seeing
that in other substances which we use, it is
sometimes their sweetness, and sometimes
their appearance that has attracted our
notice; whereas, pepper has nothing in it
that can plead as a recommendation to either
fruit or berry, its only desirable quality
being a certain pungency; and yet it is for
this that we import it all the way from
India! Who was the first to make trial of it
as an article of food? and who, I wonder,
was the man that was not content to prepare
himself by hunger only for the satisfying of
a greedy appetite?[8]
Black pepper was a well-known and
widespread, if expensive, seasoning in the
Roman Empire. Apicius' De re coquinaria, a
3rd-century cookbook probably based at least
partly on one from the 1st century CE,
includes pepper in a majority of its
recipes. Edward Gibbon wrote, in The History
of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,
that pepper was "a favorite ingredient of
the most expensive Roman cookery".
Postclassical Europe
Pepper was so valuable that it was often
used as collateral or even currency. The
taste for pepper (or the appreciation of its
monetary value) was passed on to those who
would see Rome fall. It is said that both
Attila the Hun and Alaric the Visigoth
demanded from Rome a ransom of more than a
ton of pepper when they besieged the city in
5th century A.D. After the fall of Rome,
others took over the middle legs of the
spice trade, first Byzantium and then the
Arabs. By the end of the Dark Ages, the
central portions of the spice trade were
firmly under Islamic control. Once into the
Mediterranean, the trade was largely
monopolized by Italian powers, especially
Venice and Genoa. The rise of these
city-states was funded in large part by the
spice trade.
A riddle authored by Saint Aldhelm, a
7th-century Bishop of Sherborne, sheds some
light on black pepper's role in England at
that time:
I am black on the outside, clad in a
wrinkled cover,
Yet within I bear a burning marrow.
I season delicacies, the banquets of kings,
and the luxuries of the table,
Both the sauces and the tenderized meats of
the kitchen.
But you will find in me no quality of any
worth,
Unless your bowels have been rattled by my
gleaming marrow.[9]
It is commonly believed that during the
Middle Ages, pepper was used to conceal the
taste of partially rotten meat. There is no
evidence to support this claim, and
historians view it as highly unlikely: in
the Middle Ages, pepper was a luxury item,
affordable only to the wealthy, who
certainly had unspoiled meat available as
well.[10] Similarly, the belief that pepper
was widely used as a preservative is
questionable: it is true that piperine, the
compound that gives pepper its spiciness,
has some antimicrobial properties, but at
the concentrations present when pepper is
used as a spice, the effect is small.[11]
Salt is a much more effective preservative,
and salt-cured meats were common fare,
especially in winter. However, pepper and
other spices probably did play a role in
improving the taste of long-preserved meats.
Its exorbitant price during the Middle
Ages—and the monopoly on the trade held by
Italy—was one of the inducements which led
the Portuguese to seek a sea route to India.
In 1498, Vasco da Gama became the first
European to reach India by sea; asked by
Arabs in Calicut (who spoke Spanish and
Italian) why they had come, his
representative replied, "we seek Christians
and spices." Though this first trip to India
by way of the southern tip of Africa was
only a modest success, the Portuguese
quickly returned in greater numbers and used
their superior naval firepower to eventually
gain complete control of trade on the
Arabian sea. This was the start of the first
European empire in Asia, given additional
legitimacy (at least from a European
perspective) by the 1494 Treaty of
Tordesillas, which granted Portugal
exclusive rights to the half of the world
where black pepper originated.
The Portuguese proved unable to maintain
their stranglehold on the spice trade for
long. The old Arab and Venetian trade
networks successfully smuggled enormous
quantities of spices through the patchy
Portuguese blockade, and pepper once again
flowed through Alexandria and Italy, as well
as around Africa. In the 17th century, the
Portuguese lost almost all of their valuable
Indian Ocean possessions to the Dutch and
the English. The pepper ports of Malabar
fell to the Dutch in the period 1661–1663.
As pepper supplies into Europe increased,
the price of pepper declined (though the
total value of the import trade generally
did not). Pepper, which in the early Middle
Ages had been an item exclusively for the
rich, started to become more of an everyday
seasoning among those of more average means.
Today, pepper accounts for one-fifth of the
world's spice trade.
China
It is possible that black pepper was known
in China in the 2nd century BCE, if poetic
reports regarding an explorer named Tang
Meng (唐蒙) are correct. Sent by Emperor Wu to
what is now south-west China, Tang Meng is
said to have come across something called
jujiang or "sauce-betel". He was told it
came from the markets of Shu, an area in
what is now the Sichuan province. The
traditional view among historians is that
"sauce-betel" is a sauce made from betel
leaves, but arguments have been made that it
actually refers to pepper, either long or
black.
In the 3rd century CE, black pepper made its
first definite appearance in Chinese texts,
as hujiao or "foreign pepper". It does not
appear to have been widely known at the
time, failing to appear in a 4th-century
work describing a wide variety of spices
from beyond China's southern border,
including long pepper.[14] By the 12th
century, however, black pepper had become a
popular ingredient in the cuisine of the
wealthy and powerful, sometimes taking the
place of China's native Sichuan pepper (the
tongue-numbing dried fruit of an unrelated
plant).
Marco Polo testifies to pepper's popularity
in 13th-century China when he relates what
he is told of its consumption in the city of
Kinsay (Zhejiang): "... Messer Marco heard
it stated by one of the Great Kaan's
officers of customs that the quantity of
pepper introduced daily for consumption into
the city of Kinsay amounted to 43 loads,
each load being equal to 223 lbs."[15] Marco
Polo is not considered a very reliable
source regarding China, and this second-hand
data may be even more suspect, but if this
estimated 10,000 pounds (4,500 kg) a day for
one city is anywhere near the truth, China's
pepper imports may have dwarfed Europe's.
Pepper as a medicine
Like all eastern spices, pepper was
historically both a seasoning and a
medicine. Long pepper, being stronger, was
often the preferred medication, but both
were used.
Black peppercorns figure in remedies in
Ayurveda, Siddha and Unani medicine in South
Asia. The 5th century Syriac Book of
Medicines prescribes pepper (or perhaps long
pepper) for such illnesses as constipation,
diarrhoea, earache, gangrene, heart disease,
hernia, hoarseness, indigestion, insect
bites, insomnia, joint pain, liver problems,
lung disease, oral abscesses, sunburn, tooth
decay, and toothaches.[16] Various sources
from the 5th century onward also recommend
pepper to treat eye problems, often by
applying salves or poultices made with
pepper directly to the eye. There is no
current medical evidence that any of these
treatments has any benefit; pepper applied
directly to the eye would be quite
uncomfortable and possibly damaging.
Pepper has long been believed to cause
sneezing; this is still believed true today.
Some sources say that piperine irritates the
nostrils, causing the sneezing [18]; some
say that it is just the effect of the fine
dust in ground pepper, and some say that
pepper is not in fact a very effective
sneeze-producer at all. Few if any
controlled studies have been carried out to
answer the question.
Flavor
Pepper gets its spicy heat mostly from the
piperine compound, which is found both in
the outer fruit and in the seed. Refined
piperine, milligram-for-milligram, is about
one per cent as hot as the capsaicin in
chile peppers. The outer fruit layer, left
on black pepper, also contains important
odour-contributing terpenes including
pinene, sabinene, limonene, caryophyllene,
and linalool, which give citrusy, woody, and
floral notes. These scents are mostly
missing in white pepper, which is stripped
of the fruit layer. White pepper can gain
some different odors (including musty notes)
from its longer fermentation stage.
Pepper loses flavor and aroma through
evaporation, so airtight storage helps
preserve pepper's original spiciness longer.
Pepper can also lose flavor when exposed to
light, which can transform piperine into
nearly tasteless isochavicine.[20] Once
ground, pepper's aromatics can evaporate
quickly; most culinary sources recommend
grinding whole peppercorns immediately
before use for this reason. Handheld pepper
mills (or pepper grinders), which
mechanically grind or crush whole
peppercorns, are used for this, sometimes
instead of pepper shakers, dispensers of
pre-ground pepper. Spice mills such as
pepper mills were found in European kitchens
as early as the 14th century, but the mortar
and pestle used earlier for crushing pepper
remained a popular method for centuries
after as well.
World trade
Peppercorns are, by monetary value, the most
widely traded spice in the world, accounting
for 20 per cent of all spice imports in
2002. The price of pepper can be volatile,
and this figure fluctuates a great deal year
to year; for example, pepper made up 39 per
cent of all spice imports in 1998.[22] By
weight, slightly more chile peppers are
traded worldwide than peppercorns. The
International Pepper Exchange is located in
Kochi, India.
Vietnam has recently become the world's
largest producer and exporter of pepper.
Major producers include Vietnam (85,000 long
tons in 2003), Indonesia (67,000 tons),
India (65,000 tons), Brazil (35,000 tons),
Malaysia (22,000 tons), Sri Lanka (12,750
tons), Thailand, and China. Vietnam
dominates the export market, using almost
none of its production domestically. In
2003, Vietnam exported 82,000 tons of
pepper, Indonesia 57,000 tons, Brazil 37,940
tons, Malaysia 18,500 tons, and India 17,200
tons. |
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