Welcome back to my next post about specialty crops grown in South East Asia!

Yes, your perception is right; this time I have to modify my headline, because the next spice I want to introduce to you here, is not originally from Indonesia but the whole South East. It is very well known all over the world and not missed in any household nowadays. See the pepper plant (Pic 1).

Pepper Plant & Cultivation

The pepper plant is growing as a perennial woody vine up to 4 m (13 ft) in height on supporting trees, poles, or trellises (see Pic. 2). This spreading vine is forming roots readily where trailing stems touch the ground.

Pic. 2: Pepper vine supported by tree

The flowers are small, produced on pendulous spikes 4 to 8 cm (1.6 to 3.1 in) long at the leaf nodes, the spikes lengthening up to 7 to 15 cm (2.8 to 5.9 in) as the fruit matures (see Pic. 1). Pepper can be grown in soil that is neither too dry nor susceptible to flooding. The soil needs to be rich in organic matter; – the vines do not grow nicely in an altitude of 900 m (3,000 ft) above sea level.

A single stem produces 20 to 30 fruiting spikes. The harvest begins as soon as one or two fruits at the base of the spikes begin to turn red, so truly before the fruit is fully mature, and still hard. If allowed to ripen completely, the fruit 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.

The plants are propagated by cuttings about 40 to 50 cm (16 to 20 in) long, tied up to neighboring trees or climbing frames at distances of about 2 m (6 ft 7 in) apart; trees with rough bark are favored over those with smooth bark, as the pepper plants climb rough bark more easily. 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.

Wild pepper grows in the Western Ghats region of India. Into the 19th century, the forests contained expansive wild pepper vines, as recorded by the Scottish physician Francis Buchanan in his book “A journey from Madras through the countries of Mysore, Canara and Malabar (Volume III) (Retrieved in 2015 by Deccan Herald [i]). As no successful grafting of commercial pepper on wild pepper has been achieved to date, wild pepper is gradually decreasing, because of less quality and yield competing with continuously improved cultivars.

Variants of the peppercorn

As shown in Pic. 3 (1) there exist different variants of pepper – visually separated by the color of the yielded peppercorns. We can differentiate mainly between black, green, white and red pepper. Black and green pepper is yielded from the unripe drupe of the pepper plant.

For black pepper production, the green, unripe drupes are cooked short time in hot water to clean and prepare them for drying (Pic. 4 shows a typical black peppercorn) (2). The green dried peppercorns are treated with Sulphur dioxide, canning or freeze-drying to retain the green color. Another method is the preservation of green drupes in vinegar or brine.

Pic. 3: Variants of pepper (1)

Pic 4: Dried black peppercorn (2)

Red pepper usually are the ripe pepper corns, that can be preserved in vinegar and brine, but as well dried using the same color-preserving techniques as for green pepper.

Finally, the white pepper solely consists of the seed while the darker colored flesh (skin) around the fruit is removed.

About history

As said, pepper is native to South Asia and Southeast Asia, and has been known to Indian cooking since at least 2000 BCE (Before the Common Era). Mainly the lost ancient port city of India, which is Muziris in Kerala, was very famous for exporting black pepper and various other spices. Peppercorns were a much-prized trade good, often referred to as “black gold” and used as a form of commodity money. The legacy of this trade remains in some Western legal systems that recognize the term “peppercorn rent” as a token payment for something that is, essentially, being given https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peppercorn_(legal ) .

Before the 16th century, pepper was grown in Java, Sunda, Sumatra, Madagascar, Malaysia, and everywhere in Southeast Asia. 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. Following the British hegemony in India, virtually all of the black pepper found in Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa was traded from Malabar region.

For those, who want to understand more about the historical development of this Indian coast region, just google “Malabar region map”.

Some confusion comes up when Piper nigra is mixed with long pepper and newly discovered Chili pepper, which are closely related species. The Romans called them just Piper.

In really ancient times, black pepper was found in mummification rituals of Ramses II death back in 1213 BCE. Also, in ancient Greece (400 BCE) pepper was known as rare and expensive item, that only very rich people could afford. In order to give an idea how this spice came to Europe, in Pic. 6 you see the old trade route from Italy to India.

As an explanatory remark I found the following note about pepper from Pliny the Elder (born as Gaius Plinius Secundus, AD 23–79), who was a Roman author, a naturalist and natural philosopher:

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?

— Pliny, Natural History 12.14

In postclassical Europe it is reported that pepper was used as currency and in the Middle Ages, pepper was said to be often used to conceal the taste of partially rotten meat. That of course was never proved as pepper was a valuable spice, that only rich people could afford and one can imagine that no rotten meat appears on their tables (!)

Getting the Portuguese, English and Dutch traders into play, pepper supplies into Europe increased and the price of pepper declined (though the total value of the import trade generally did not). So, it happened, that 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.

In China it is questionable, if black pepper was known in the second century BCE. However, in the third century CE, black pepper made its first definite appearance in Chinese texts, as hujiao or “foreign pepper”. Further in the 13^th Century, Marco Polo testifies the popularity of pepper in China, and in the 15^th Century black pepper returned to China in such huge amounts, that the once costly spice became a common commodity.

Nutrition

The spicy taste of black pepper derives from the piperine inside the outer skin and seed of the fruit. Black pepper contains between 4.6 and 9.7% piperine by mass, and white pepper slightly more than that. Refined piperine, by weight, is about one percent as hot as the capsaicin found in chili peppers. The outer fruit layer, left on black pepper, also contains aroma-contributing terpenes, including germacrene (11%), limonene (10%), pinene (10%), alpha-phellandrene (9%), and beta-caryophyllene (7%), which give citrusy, woody, and floral notes.

Pepper loses flavor and aroma through evaporation, so airtight storage helps preserve its spiciness longer. Pepper can also lose flavor 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 grinders, which mechanically grind or crush whole peppercorns, are used for this as an alternative to pepper shakers that dispense ground pepper. Spice mills such as pepper mills (see Pic. 7) were found in European kitchens as early as the 14th century, but the mortar and pestle used earlier for crushing pepper have remained a popular method for centuries, as well.