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Black pepper

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                 iBlack pepper
   Pepper plant with immature peppercorns
   Pepper plant with immature peppercorns
           Scientific classification

   Kingdom:  Plantae
   Division: Magnoliophyta
   Class:    Magnoliopsida
   Order:    Piperales
   Family:   Piperaceae
   Genus:    Piper
   Species:  P. nigrum

                                Binomial name

   Piper nigrum
   L.

   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
   millimetres 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 flavour 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.

   The word pepper is derived from the Sanskrit pippali, 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 the unrelated 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.

Varieties of pepper

   Black and white peppercorns
   Enlarge
   Black and white peppercorns

   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.

   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-coloured sauces or mashed potatoes, where ground
   black pepper would visibly stand out. There is disagreement regarding
   which is generally spicier. They do have differing flavours due to the
   presence of certain compounds in the outer fruit layer of the berry
   that are not found in the seed.
   Black, green, pink, and white peppercorns
   Enlarge
   Black, green, pink, and white peppercorns

   Green pepper, like black, is made from the unripe berries. Dried green
   peppercorns are treated in a manner that retains the green colour, such
   as treatment with sulphur 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.
   Their flavour has been described as piquant and fresh, with a bright
   aroma. They decay quickly if not dried or preserved.

   A rarely seen product called pink pepper or red pepper consists of ripe
   red pepper berries preserved in brine and vinegar. Even more rarely
   seen, the ripe red peppercorns can also be dried using the same
   colour-preserving techniques used to produce green pepper. Pink pepper
   from Piper nigrum is distinct 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. Sichuan peppercorn is another
   "pepper" that is botanically unrelated to black pepper.

   Peppercorns are often categorised 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 a
   higher-grade pepper, made from the largest, ripest 10% of berries from
   Malabar plants grown on Mount Tellicherry. 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

   Piper nigrum from an 1832 print
   Enlarge
   Piper nigrum from an 1832 print

   The pepper plant is a perennial woody vine growing to four metres 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 centimetres long and three to six
   centimetres broad. The flowers are small, produced on pendulous spikes
   four to eight centimetres long at the leaf nodes, the spikes
   lengthening to seven to 15 centimetres 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 centimetres long, tied
   up to neighbouring trees or climbing frames at distances of about
   two metres apart; trees with rough bark are favoured 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 and spread out to dry in the
   sun, then the peppercorns are 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 trade good,
   often referred to as black gold and used as a form of commodity 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 travelled 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. 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.

   Black pepper, along with other spices from India and lands farther
   east, changed the course of world history. It was in some part the
   preciousness of these spices that led to the European efforts to find a
   sea route to India and consequently to the European colonial occupation
   of that country, as well as the European discovery and colonization of
   the Americas.

Ancient times

   Black peppercorns were found lodged in the nostrils of Ramesses 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.
   A possible trade route from Italy to south-west India
   A possible trade route from Italy to south-west India

   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 travelled 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
   travelling 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?

   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
   favourite 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 monopolised
   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.

   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. 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. 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.
   A depiction of Calicut, India published in 1572 during Portugal's
   control of the pepper trade
   Enlarge
   A depiction of Calicut, India published in 1572 during Portugal's
   control of the pepper trade

   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. 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." 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

   'There's certainly too much pepper in that soup!' Alice said to
   herself, as well as she could for sneezing. — Alice in Wonderland
   (1865). Chapter VI: Pig and Pepper. Note the cook's pepper mill.
   Enlarge
   'There's certainly too much pepper in that soup!' Alice said to
   herself, as well as she could for sneezing. — Alice in Wonderland
   (1865). Chapter VI: Pig and Pepper. Note the cook's pepper mill.

   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 India. 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. 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 ; 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.

   Pepper is eliminated from the diet of patients having abdominal surgery
   and ulcers because of its irritating effect upon the intestines, being
   replaced by what is referred to as a bland diet.

Flavour

   A handheld pepper mill
   Enlarge
   A handheld pepper mill

   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 odours (including musty notes) from its longer
   fermentation stage.

   Pepper loses flavour and aroma through evaporation, so airtight storage
   helps preserve pepper's original spiciness longer. Pepper can also lose
   flavour when exposed to light, which can transform piperine into nearly
   tasteless isochavicine. 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 percent 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 percent of all spice
   imports in 1998. 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 (85,000  long tons in 2003). Other major producers include
   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.
   Retrieved from " http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_pepper"
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