HISTORY OF THE PEPPER

The garden pepper (Capsicum frutescens) is not related to the true pepper (Piper nigrum) from which we get the common black pepper on our tables. Why do we call C. frutescens “pepper”? The answer goes all the way back to Columbus. He had set forth on his famous voyages to find a short route to India and the East Indies largely for trade. Spices from the East were important in commerce and therefore of much interest to Columbus and his commercial-adventurer associates. When they found the Indians of the West Indies growing and using fiery forms of Capsicum, the product was thought to be a kind of pepper.

As early as 1493 Peter Martyr wrote that Columbus brought home with him “pepper more pungent than that from the Caucasus.” In 1494 the, physician to Columbus’s fleet on his second voyage referred to the plant in a letter to Spanish authorities; 20 years later the plant and its uses were described in detail by another explorer for Spain.

Fragments of different types of peppers have been found in Peruvian ruins believed to be more than 2,000 years old. Fruits of the pepper are unmistakably illustrated in the elaborate embroidery of an Indian garment unearthed near the coast of Peru and believed to date back to about the first century. The Olmecs, Toltecs, and Aztecs also are known to have cultivated and used peppers extensively.

In the first half of the 16th century, voyagers to the Americas encountered many forms of peppers, not only in the West Indies but in Central America, Mexico, Peru, Chile-wherever they touched the American Tropics. By the beginning of the 17th century virtually every form known today had been found, all being grown by the Indians.

Peppers were introduced into Spain in 1493, were known in England by 1548, and in Central Europe by 1585 or earlier. In the 17th century they were taken to India and southeastern Asia by the Portuguese. Peppers became so common there that their American origin was long overlooked, despite the fact that in India they are all consistently called “chillies.”

In Spain the hot peppers are called chili (from Chile), and certain hot kinds are called chili peppers in the United States. A mixture of chopped meat and beans, highly flavored with chili pepper, is called chili con carne- ”chili with meat.”

The mild or sweet kinds in Spain are called pimenta or pimiento, while in the United States “Pimiento” refers to only a single type of thick-fleshed, bright-red sweet pepper. It yields the brilliant stuffing in olives, the red particles in “pimento cheese,” and the pimiento we buy in tiny cans or jars.

A distinctive form of long, thick, bright-red pepper with nonpungent flesh has long been cultivated in Hungary and adjacent areas under the name of paprika. There is now a small paprika industry in this country. The tabasco pepper is the basis of pungent tobasco sauces made in our South.

Cayenne pepper is the dried, ground fruit of a long, slender form of hot “red pepper.” This form, named for a coastal city in French Guiana in South America, was doubtless taken to Asia by Spanish or Italian explorers and re-introduced into America from there. (National Geographic: 1949)

(Reference: Texas A & M University: Vegetable Travelers)

To receive our e-mail updates,
please send us your e-mail address!!!