7 ms·

History of Pepper

74 points by graderjs 5y ago

sfifs 5y ago
One interesting side note is that in the land of origin of pepper in India, to a very large extent Chilli has replaced pepper as the spiciness creating ingredient in most household and restaurant dishes. Chillies of course come from Mexico and are another colonial import. Pepper is now used only in a very few mostly traditional Indian dishes.
- chupchap 5y ago
  Pepper is still used a lot in Kerala, but I agree with you that red and green chilies are used more commonly.
- mangamadaiyan 5y ago
  Well, chilli grows far more easily than black pepper, and consequently is far more affordable, even today. Secondly, it takes far more black pepper by weight to induce any kind of burn. Thirdly, they taste very different. The widespread use of chilli as a spice in Indian cooking would also have an economic aspect to it, I'm sure. Fun fact: the one place (speaking for Southern India) where you're likely to find cooking that uses only indigenous (pre-chilli -- ergo pre 16th century) ingredients is any kind of Hindu religious ceremony or celebration associated with death, be it a funeral or a death anniversary. That stuff tastes OK, some of it is great. All told, I'd rather have food tainted by "modern" ingredients than not. Edit: qualified the "celebrations and ceremonies" bit
  - elangoc 5y ago
    The thing about chili peppers is that they're not healthy (have medicinal benefits) in the way peppercorn and long pepper do. Capsaicin can be harmful in large quantities, IIUC. There are South Indian foods and snacks like venpongal and methu vadai that use whole peppercorn, not chili peppers. Tomato is another colonialism byproduct, but there are still people who make versions that use lemons instead of tomatoes. A common homemade drink for sick people is made from grinding dried ginger, coriander seeds, and black pepper. These are all daily foods. But you're right, few households or restaurants are 100% free of these 400 year old import crops. Obviously, chili pepper is used where peppercorn or ground black pepper used to be, for the reasons in the parent comment. It also makes sense that black pepper would have been used in various dishes because it enhances the potency of the medicinal properties of turmeric by an order of magnitude. It wouldn't be hard to go back to black pepper, I imagine, with a little retooling of recipes to rebalance flavors.
    - dtgriscom 5y ago
      > Capsaicin can be harmful in large quantities, IIUC. Citation?
      - grendelt 5y ago
        > Citation? Pepper spray. ;)
        josephcsible 5y ago
        Pepper spray is used because it's really painful but isn't actually harmful.
        grendelt 5y ago
        Well too much of anything is harmful. If it isn't, it isn't "too much".
        qart 5y ago
        In the same vein, too much of anything creates black holes.
        dtgriscom 5y ago
        Adding so much pepper you get a black hole would definitely risk your tip.
    - mangamadaiyan 5y ago
      I don't subscribe to the opinion that all "imports" are bad, and that everything indigenous was miraculous and glorious. For goodness' sake, you probably typed your message on a Chinese-made device in a language that is not your mother tongue, as did I. That doesn't make us less of anything, does it? Even the quintessentially southern Idli is rumoured to be a 12th century import brought down to the south by migrating Saurashtrians. (Mentioning this over other theories, since it seems to have the strongest documentary evidence). That isn't going to stop me enjoying my Idli with Sambar (which too is apparently a culinary import!). By and large, cultural exchange makes the world a richer place. Are there unsavoury parts to human history? Yes. Even the Cholas (for example) conquered and colonized lands far away from where they were born, did they not?
- walrus01 5y ago
  Something interesting to think about is that the potato has become an essential and staple food in some places like the central mountain highlands of Afghanistan, but it didn't exist there prior to sailing ship contact between the "new world" and "old world". How exactly the potato made it there from Spanish, Portugeuse and early English expeditions around 1500, and the lag time until it became commonplace there I am not quite clear.
  - na85 5y ago
    No doubt it was traded along the remaining fragments of the Silk Road. Some routes persisted into the 1700s.
Bud 5y ago
As an aside, if anyone is looking for an absolutely insane pepper mill, get the Männkitchen Pepper Cannon. You will never need another one. It's a big solid hunk of aluminum, stainless steel burrs, and puts out 5-10x the amount that other mills do per crank. Easier to adjust fineness of grind than any other mill out there. Evenness of grind is also superior. It has changed my entire life in the kitchen.
- nefitty 5y ago
  Wow, it's available for only $199 at https://mannkitchen.com/pages/pepper-cannon https://mannkitchen.com/pages/pepper-cannon "But, will there be too much pepper?" "No. There will be the exact amount of pepper you want, ground more consistently, in a fraction of the time."
- pottertheotter 5y ago
  FWIW, I've had the Cole & Mason Derwent pepper miller for 5 years and have liked it. For $50, I'm not sure I use it enough to make up for the extra $150 the Männkitchen costs. It's cool though! If I have a lot of pepper to grind, I'd use an electric spice grinder.
- hammock 5y ago
  A similar pepper mill, made in the USA (not China) for a lower price: Unicorn Mills Magnum ($59) http://www.unicornmills.org/magnum-plus.html http://www.unicornmills.org/magnum-plus.html I have not tested either, though I have heard of the Mannkitchen Pepper Cannon and from what I know it is probably the best one you can get if you are not concerned with price. We are talking high-volume output, only one or two pumps needed per dish. Or as they say in the marketing, "Pepper your steak in 7 cranks instead of 70." Comparison video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=25IO6GJ3zfg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=25IO6GJ3zfg Of course, the classic pepper mill is the Peugeot Paris, available here in every size from 3 inches to 30 inches (don't buy from Amazon, there are a bunch of counterfeits): https://us.peugeot-saveurs.com/en_us/paris-mills https://us.peugeot-saveurs.com/en_us/paris-mills I did a bunch of pepper mill research not too long ago - AMA.
  - 5y ago
cosmotic 5y ago
"Known Medicinal Uses: Pepper is an important ingredient in Ayurvedic, Chinese, Unani" Those are not medicinal uses.
- news_to_me 5y ago
  They are, they’re just not mainstream medicine.
  - drsnow 5y ago
    Mainstream in this case meaning legitimate.
  - cosmotic 5y ago
    If we allow for 'not mainstream medicine', why then are they stopping at those three? Why not include the spells and potions that might include pepper? Why not the treatments you or I could just make up on the spot in a work of fiction? If we expand the definition of medicine to include nonsense, the term would lose all meaning. As a society we demand medicine be 'things proven to work' and all those things they list are not part of that set; they have not been proven to work, and thus not included in 'medicine'. If they were in fact proven to work, they would simply be part of mainstream medicine.
    - orgels_revenge 5y ago
      Piperine, an extract from black pepper, is known to increase absorption of nutrients in the gut. A study on PubMed shows increases of curcumin absorption by 2000% after taking piperine. Personally, I have noticed great effects when I take piperine in combination with other compounds. I got here from studying ancient Chinese medicine.
peter303 5y ago
"The spice must flow" has this historic antecedent. At times pepper's taste, preservative, alleged health value and price was off the scale, not unlike Dune spice.
- johnhenry 5y ago
  Inhale enough pepper and things get crazy, not unlike Dune spice.
- unwind 5y ago
  Are you sure pepper has preservative properties? Any link/reference would be appreciated, I hadn't heard of that before. A quick check of Wikipedia didn't find anything either.
  - jasone 5y ago
    I recall reading about spice being used to mask the flavor of food starting to go bad. It's not a preservative function, rather it allows people to eat poor-tasting-but-not-yet-poisonous food.
    - ars 5y ago
      That's a myth that won't go away: http://livingthehistoryelizabethchadwick.blogspot.com/2013/03/todays-research-snippet-myth-about.html http://livingthehistoryelizabethchadwick.blogspot.com/2013/0...
  - caseyohara 5y ago
    From the linked article: As a Preservative: The value of pepper as a natural preservative for meat and other perishable foods has been known for centuries. Studies have shown that this is due to the anti-oxidant and anti-microbial properties present in pepper.
    - unwind 5y ago
      Haha thanks, serves me right for skimming, I guess. I couldn't come up with any examples of foods preserved using black pepper obviously, but that might just be cultural filtering (I'm from northern Europe). Googling says "jams, pickles, preserves and candies" which was not very helpful.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
porknubbins 5y ago
I’m always amazed by our ability to adopt and normalize once “exotic” spices, commodities etc and then pretend they were always a part of our culture so much so that we forget where they even came from. One of the UK’s most popular tea brands “Yorkshire Gold” evokes nostaligia for rural England when it really comes from Africa or India.
- teh_klev 5y ago
  Your comment reminded me of this quite amusing exchange between Yorkshire Tea and a fully paid up member of the Brexiteer Wingnut Order: https://www.indy100.com/viral/brexit-yorkshire-tea-not-grown-in-england-africa-india-tea-trade-twitter-viral-funny-8200416 https://www.indy100.com/viral/brexit-yorkshire-tea-not-grown...
- culi 5y ago
  Potatoes were domesticated in the Andes and Ireland was very resistant to them at first. Bell peppers and chili peppers, tomatoes, chocolate, corn, and much much more was unknown to Afro-Eurasia until just a few generations ago. Over half the foods in most people's kitchens nowadays comes from other continents
mcovalt 5y ago
I was curious how our use of black pepper came to be. One of my favorite Wikipedia articles chronicles history's utterances of the same question: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_pepper#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_pepper#History
Anthony-G 5y ago
We only had pre-ground white or black pepper when I was growing up but as a young adult, I discovered that pepper has much more flavour when freshly ground. Since then, I’ve wondered why I don’t ever see white pepper-corns for sale. This article answered the question for me: > Black pepper tastes strongest when freshly ground although pre-ground pepper is often used in seasonings for convenience. White pepper is less aromatic than black pepper but has special applications, as in white sauces where black pepper would give them an undesirable speckled appearance For what it’s worth, when cooking a white sauce, I just live with the speckled appearance – though I could be tempted to try see how it tastes with pre-ground white pepper.
- addaon 5y ago
  I've also discovered, not surprisingly, that there's a wide quality range for peppercorns. Good, fresh peppercorns are not just stronger, but have a wider range of flavors, like floral notes. This [1] is what's in my peppermill now, and I'm really enjoying it -- no affiliation with B&B, but I've enjoyed everything I've bought from them. [1] https://www.burlapandbarrel.com/collections/peppercorns/products/zanzibar-peppercorns https://www.burlapandbarrel.com/collections/peppercorns/prod...
  - Bud 5y ago
    Those look rather nice, but they are 10x what you should be paying. You can get good, fresh Tellicherry peppercorns for $8 a pound on Amazon, and they are very nice. Another option is your local co-op or spice store, which, if you are lucky, should have pepper in bulk for about the same price. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07QW1GH8Q/ref=vp_d_pb_TIER2_cmt_lp_B00ILK98EA_pd?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=B07QW1GH8Q&pd_rd_w=vLmQt&pf_rd_p=97e8de0d-97b9-4dbd-a111-de3444373e29&pf_rd_r=1GXFR73QF0XW429WCB2B&pd_rd_r=9cd39af2-cd77-46d6-950a-5772fe4c0bce&pd_rd_wg=fpFNE https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07QW1GH8Q/ref=vp_d_pb_TIER2_cmt_l...
    - addaon 5y ago
      I try to avoid eating things from Amazon, due to supply chain concerns. Compared to the $10/lb pepper I get locally, the $40/lb stuff is noticeably better, and I end up using a bit less of it. It's not a major expense for me -- a pound lasts nearly a year at my usage rate, which is about the point where I'd be worried about freshness anyway -- so, while I agree the cost-per-unit-weight difference is significant and even ridiculous, the cost-per-meal difference is in the noise for me personally.
twright 5y ago
I think a lot about this Trevor Noah bit [1] with a good punchline about the historic and modern importance of spices. I’d be interested what the article means by “[de Gama’s discovery of spices on Malabar] destroyed the economies of Alexandria, Genoa and Venice“ If you liked reading this article I recommend Kurlansky’s book “Salt: A History of the World”. [1] https://youtu.be/BOt5SmHf2aE https://youtu.be/BOt5SmHf2aE
Karupan 5y ago
I was lucky enough to once get quite a bit of black and white pepper from my friend’s spice estate in south India. The black pepper wasn’t considerably better than a good supermarket brand, but the white pepper was much better. Since it’s quite a common ingredient in South Indian cuisine, my family used it up in a couple of years. We usually end up hand pounding using a mortar and pestle.
cardamomo 5y ago
For those interested in a more personal take on this amazing spice, I recommend Amitav Ghosh's essay, "The Spice of Life" (2017). https://www.slowfood.com/the-spice-of-life/ https://www.slowfood.com/the-spice-of-life/
simonebrunozzi 5y ago
Several inaccuracies regarding Venice. Venice thrived in the 15th and 16th century, despite the claim of the article of Venice losing the pepper trade to Lisbon, and started to decline only at the beginning of the 17th century. Salt seems to have been at least as important as pepper. From the Wikipedia page on the Economic History of Venice [0]: > According to economic historian Jan De Vries, Venice's economic power in the Mediterranean had declined significantly by the start of the 17th century. De Vries attributes this decline to the loss of the spice trade, a declining uncompetitive textile industry, competition in book publishing due to a rejuvenated Catholic Church, the adverse impact of the Thirty Years' War on Venice's key trade partners, and the increasing cost of cotton and silk imports to Venice. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_history_of_Venice#Salt_trade https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_history_of_Venice#Sal...
- graderjs 5y ago
  It's history. There's bound to be vagaries of interpretation for different authors. But even given your source it doesn't seem so much inaccurate as mostly corroborated > De Vries attributes this decline to the loss of the spice trade And regarding the date I don't think you can over specify the meaning of the article's sentence on Venice to induce an inaccuracy. Vasco de Gama’s discovery of a sea-route to the spice lands ... in 1498 ... destroyed the economies of Alexandria, Genoa and Venice Sure, you could read that as: "Venice's economy was destroyed the moment de Gama set foot on the spice lands", but it seems an equally, if not more, valid reading (and much more generous and reasonable), to assume what is meant is that de Gama's discovery eventually destroyed those economies...as in, it was an inflection point that tipped the scales in Portugal's favor and helped begin the processes that directly lead to the incumbents' declines. Reasonable given that no one expects economies of empires to be destroyed overnight. With empire-scale reserves, and monopoly advantages the process could reasonably take a century, of course (and a century being roughly the span from 1498 to the 17th century). And generous given that, since the decline date is so easily found on a resource as common as Wikipedia, it's unlikely they are mistaken by not being erudite enough. The lack of elaborating temporal detail is even less damning, given the economy the article seems to want to take with words, sparing a mere two sentences on large swathes of history. With this sort of compact language, who can expect them to pedantically agonize over removing every possible divergent interpretation, and achieve unequivocal precision? I think the more likely situation is the article is perfectly accurate on that point, and you've simply read an inaccuracy into it by misinterpreting the authors' omission of absolute precision as error.
travisgriggs 5y ago
Hoped it was this: https://drpeppermuseum.com/history/ https://drpeppermuseum.com/history/ Oh well.
pacificmint 5y ago
Marjorie Shaffer wrote a whole book on the topic: "Pepper: A History of the World's Most Influential Spice" [1] If you are interested in learning more about the history of the spice trade, it's well worth a read. [1] https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250048660 https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250048660

74 points by graderjs 5y ago

One interesting side note is that in the land of origin of pepper in India, to a very large extent Chilli has replaced pepper as the spiciness creating ingredient in most household and restaurant dishes. Chillies of course come from Mexico and are another colonial import. Pepper is now used only in a very few mostly traditional Indian dishes.

chupchap 5y ago
Pepper is still used a lot in Kerala, but I agree with you that red and green chilies are used more commonly.
mangamadaiyan 5y ago
Well, chilli grows far more easily than black pepper, and consequently is far more affordable, even today. Secondly, it takes far more black pepper by weight to induce any kind of burn. Thirdly, they taste very different. The widespread use of chilli as a spice in Indian cooking would also have an economic aspect to it, I'm sure. Fun fact: the one place (speaking for Southern India) where you're likely to find cooking that uses only indigenous (pre-chilli -- ergo pre 16th century) ingredients is any kind of Hindu religious ceremony or celebration associated with death, be it a funeral or a death anniversary. That stuff tastes OK, some of it is great. All told, I'd rather have food tainted by "modern" ingredients than not. Edit: qualified the "celebrations and ceremonies" bit
- elangoc 5y ago
  The thing about chili peppers is that they're not healthy (have medicinal benefits) in the way peppercorn and long pepper do. Capsaicin can be harmful in large quantities, IIUC. There are South Indian foods and snacks like venpongal and methu vadai that use whole peppercorn, not chili peppers. Tomato is another colonialism byproduct, but there are still people who make versions that use lemons instead of tomatoes. A common homemade drink for sick people is made from grinding dried ginger, coriander seeds, and black pepper. These are all daily foods. But you're right, few households or restaurants are 100% free of these 400 year old import crops. Obviously, chili pepper is used where peppercorn or ground black pepper used to be, for the reasons in the parent comment. It also makes sense that black pepper would have been used in various dishes because it enhances the potency of the medicinal properties of turmeric by an order of magnitude. It wouldn't be hard to go back to black pepper, I imagine, with a little retooling of recipes to rebalance flavors.
  - dtgriscom 5y ago
    > Capsaicin can be harmful in large quantities, IIUC. Citation?
    - grendelt 5y ago
      > Citation? Pepper spray. ;)
      - josephcsible 5y ago
        Pepper spray is used because it's really painful but isn't actually harmful.
        grendelt 5y ago
        Well too much of anything is harmful. If it isn't, it isn't "too much".
        qart 5y ago
        In the same vein, too much of anything creates black holes.
        dtgriscom 5y ago
        Adding so much pepper you get a black hole would definitely risk your tip.
  - mangamadaiyan 5y ago
    I don't subscribe to the opinion that all "imports" are bad, and that everything indigenous was miraculous and glorious. For goodness' sake, you probably typed your message on a Chinese-made device in a language that is not your mother tongue, as did I. That doesn't make us less of anything, does it? Even the quintessentially southern Idli is rumoured to be a 12th century import brought down to the south by migrating Saurashtrians. (Mentioning this over other theories, since it seems to have the strongest documentary evidence). That isn't going to stop me enjoying my Idli with Sambar (which too is apparently a culinary import!). By and large, cultural exchange makes the world a richer place. Are there unsavoury parts to human history? Yes. Even the Cholas (for example) conquered and colonized lands far away from where they were born, did they not?
walrus01 5y ago
Something interesting to think about is that the potato has become an essential and staple food in some places like the central mountain highlands of Afghanistan, but it didn't exist there prior to sailing ship contact between the "new world" and "old world". How exactly the potato made it there from Spanish, Portugeuse and early English expeditions around 1500, and the lag time until it became commonplace there I am not quite clear.
- na85 5y ago
  No doubt it was traded along the remaining fragments of the Silk Road. Some routes persisted into the 1700s.

Bud 5y ago

As an aside, if anyone is looking for an absolutely insane pepper mill, get the Männkitchen Pepper Cannon. You will never need another one. It's a big solid hunk of aluminum, stainless steel burrs, and puts out 5-10x the amount that other mills do per crank. Easier to adjust fineness of grind than any other mill out there. Evenness of grind is also superior. It has changed my entire life in the kitchen.

nefitty 5y ago
Wow, it's available for only $199 at https://mannkitchen.com/pages/pepper-cannon https://mannkitchen.com/pages/pepper-cannon "But, will there be too much pepper?" "No. There will be the exact amount of pepper you want, ground more consistently, in a fraction of the time."
pottertheotter 5y ago
FWIW, I've had the Cole & Mason Derwent pepper miller for 5 years and have liked it. For $50, I'm not sure I use it enough to make up for the extra $150 the Männkitchen costs. It's cool though! If I have a lot of pepper to grind, I'd use an electric spice grinder.
hammock 5y ago
A similar pepper mill, made in the USA (not China) for a lower price: Unicorn Mills Magnum ($59) http://www.unicornmills.org/magnum-plus.html http://www.unicornmills.org/magnum-plus.html I have not tested either, though I have heard of the Mannkitchen Pepper Cannon and from what I know it is probably the best one you can get if you are not concerned with price. We are talking high-volume output, only one or two pumps needed per dish. Or as they say in the marketing, "Pepper your steak in 7 cranks instead of 70." Comparison video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=25IO6GJ3zfg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=25IO6GJ3zfg Of course, the classic pepper mill is the Peugeot Paris, available here in every size from 3 inches to 30 inches (don't buy from Amazon, there are a bunch of counterfeits): https://us.peugeot-saveurs.com/en_us/paris-mills https://us.peugeot-saveurs.com/en_us/paris-mills I did a bunch of pepper mill research not too long ago - AMA.
- 5y ago

cosmotic 5y ago

"Known Medicinal Uses: Pepper is an important ingredient in Ayurvedic, Chinese, Unani" Those are not medicinal uses.

news_to_me 5y ago
They are, they’re just not mainstream medicine.
- drsnow 5y ago
  Mainstream in this case meaning legitimate.
- cosmotic 5y ago
  If we allow for 'not mainstream medicine', why then are they stopping at those three? Why not include the spells and potions that might include pepper? Why not the treatments you or I could just make up on the spot in a work of fiction? If we expand the definition of medicine to include nonsense, the term would lose all meaning. As a society we demand medicine be 'things proven to work' and all those things they list are not part of that set; they have not been proven to work, and thus not included in 'medicine'. If they were in fact proven to work, they would simply be part of mainstream medicine.
  - orgels_revenge 5y ago
    Piperine, an extract from black pepper, is known to increase absorption of nutrients in the gut. A study on PubMed shows increases of curcumin absorption by 2000% after taking piperine. Personally, I have noticed great effects when I take piperine in combination with other compounds. I got here from studying ancient Chinese medicine.

peter303 5y ago

"The spice must flow" has this historic antecedent. At times pepper's taste, preservative, alleged health value and price was off the scale, not unlike Dune spice.

johnhenry 5y ago
Inhale enough pepper and things get crazy, not unlike Dune spice.
unwind 5y ago
Are you sure pepper has preservative properties? Any link/reference would be appreciated, I hadn't heard of that before. A quick check of Wikipedia didn't find anything either.
- jasone 5y ago
  I recall reading about spice being used to mask the flavor of food starting to go bad. It's not a preservative function, rather it allows people to eat poor-tasting-but-not-yet-poisonous food.
  - ars 5y ago
    That's a myth that won't go away: http://livingthehistoryelizabethchadwick.blogspot.com/2013/03/todays-research-snippet-myth-about.html http://livingthehistoryelizabethchadwick.blogspot.com/2013/0...
- caseyohara 5y ago
  From the linked article: As a Preservative: The value of pepper as a natural preservative for meat and other perishable foods has been known for centuries. Studies have shown that this is due to the anti-oxidant and anti-microbial properties present in pepper.
  - unwind 5y ago
    Haha thanks, serves me right for skimming, I guess. I couldn't come up with any examples of foods preserved using black pepper obviously, but that might just be cultural filtering (I'm from northern Europe). Googling says "jams, pickles, preserves and candies" which was not very helpful.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

porknubbins 5y ago

I’m always amazed by our ability to adopt and normalize once “exotic” spices, commodities etc and then pretend they were always a part of our culture so much so that we forget where they even came from. One of the UK’s most popular tea brands “Yorkshire Gold” evokes nostaligia for rural England when it really comes from Africa or India.

teh_klev 5y ago
Your comment reminded me of this quite amusing exchange between Yorkshire Tea and a fully paid up member of the Brexiteer Wingnut Order: https://www.indy100.com/viral/brexit-yorkshire-tea-not-grown-in-england-africa-india-tea-trade-twitter-viral-funny-8200416 https://www.indy100.com/viral/brexit-yorkshire-tea-not-grown...
culi 5y ago
Potatoes were domesticated in the Andes and Ireland was very resistant to them at first. Bell peppers and chili peppers, tomatoes, chocolate, corn, and much much more was unknown to Afro-Eurasia until just a few generations ago. Over half the foods in most people's kitchens nowadays comes from other continents

mcovalt 5y ago

I was curious how our use of black pepper came to be. One of my favorite Wikipedia articles chronicles history's utterances of the same question: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_pepper#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_pepper#History

Anthony-G 5y ago

We only had pre-ground white or black pepper when I was growing up but as a young adult, I discovered that pepper has much more flavour when freshly ground. Since then, I’ve wondered why I don’t ever see white pepper-corns for sale. This article answered the question for me: > Black pepper tastes strongest when freshly ground although pre-ground pepper is often used in seasonings for convenience. White pepper is less aromatic than black pepper but has special applications, as in white sauces where black pepper would give them an undesirable speckled appearance For what it’s worth, when cooking a white sauce, I just live with the speckled appearance – though I could be tempted to try see how it tastes with pre-ground white pepper.

addaon 5y ago
I've also discovered, not surprisingly, that there's a wide quality range for peppercorns. Good, fresh peppercorns are not just stronger, but have a wider range of flavors, like floral notes. This [1] is what's in my peppermill now, and I'm really enjoying it -- no affiliation with B&B, but I've enjoyed everything I've bought from them. [1] https://www.burlapandbarrel.com/collections/peppercorns/products/zanzibar-peppercorns https://www.burlapandbarrel.com/collections/peppercorns/prod...
- Bud 5y ago
  Those look rather nice, but they are 10x what you should be paying. You can get good, fresh Tellicherry peppercorns for $8 a pound on Amazon, and they are very nice. Another option is your local co-op or spice store, which, if you are lucky, should have pepper in bulk for about the same price. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07QW1GH8Q/ref=vp_d_pb_TIER2_cmt_lp_B00ILK98EA_pd?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=B07QW1GH8Q&pd_rd_w=vLmQt&pf_rd_p=97e8de0d-97b9-4dbd-a111-de3444373e29&pf_rd_r=1GXFR73QF0XW429WCB2B&pd_rd_r=9cd39af2-cd77-46d6-950a-5772fe4c0bce&pd_rd_wg=fpFNE https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07QW1GH8Q/ref=vp_d_pb_TIER2_cmt_l...
  - addaon 5y ago
    I try to avoid eating things from Amazon, due to supply chain concerns. Compared to the $10/lb pepper I get locally, the $40/lb stuff is noticeably better, and I end up using a bit less of it. It's not a major expense for me -- a pound lasts nearly a year at my usage rate, which is about the point where I'd be worried about freshness anyway -- so, while I agree the cost-per-unit-weight difference is significant and even ridiculous, the cost-per-meal difference is in the noise for me personally.

twright 5y ago

I think a lot about this Trevor Noah bit [1] with a good punchline about the historic and modern importance of spices. I’d be interested what the article means by “[de Gama’s discovery of spices on Malabar] destroyed the economies of Alexandria, Genoa and Venice“ If you liked reading this article I recommend Kurlansky’s book “Salt: A History of the World”. [1] https://youtu.be/BOt5SmHf2aE https://youtu.be/BOt5SmHf2aE

Karupan 5y ago

I was lucky enough to once get quite a bit of black and white pepper from my friend’s spice estate in south India. The black pepper wasn’t considerably better than a good supermarket brand, but the white pepper was much better. Since it’s quite a common ingredient in South Indian cuisine, my family used it up in a couple of years. We usually end up hand pounding using a mortar and pestle.

cardamomo 5y ago

For those interested in a more personal take on this amazing spice, I recommend Amitav Ghosh's essay, "The Spice of Life" (2017). https://www.slowfood.com/the-spice-of-life/ https://www.slowfood.com/the-spice-of-life/

simonebrunozzi 5y ago

Several inaccuracies regarding Venice. Venice thrived in the 15th and 16th century, despite the claim of the article of Venice losing the pepper trade to Lisbon, and started to decline only at the beginning of the 17th century. Salt seems to have been at least as important as pepper. From the Wikipedia page on the Economic History of Venice [0]: > According to economic historian Jan De Vries, Venice's economic power in the Mediterranean had declined significantly by the start of the 17th century. De Vries attributes this decline to the loss of the spice trade, a declining uncompetitive textile industry, competition in book publishing due to a rejuvenated Catholic Church, the adverse impact of the Thirty Years' War on Venice's key trade partners, and the increasing cost of cotton and silk imports to Venice. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_history_of_Venice#Salt_trade https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_history_of_Venice#Sal...

graderjs 5y ago
It's history. There's bound to be vagaries of interpretation for different authors. But even given your source it doesn't seem so much inaccurate as mostly corroborated > De Vries attributes this decline to the loss of the spice trade And regarding the date I don't think you can over specify the meaning of the article's sentence on Venice to induce an inaccuracy. Vasco de Gama’s discovery of a sea-route to the spice lands ... in 1498 ... destroyed the economies of Alexandria, Genoa and Venice Sure, you could read that as: "Venice's economy was destroyed the moment de Gama set foot on the spice lands", but it seems an equally, if not more, valid reading (and much more generous and reasonable), to assume what is meant is that de Gama's discovery eventually destroyed those economies...as in, it was an inflection point that tipped the scales in Portugal's favor and helped begin the processes that directly lead to the incumbents' declines. Reasonable given that no one expects economies of empires to be destroyed overnight. With empire-scale reserves, and monopoly advantages the process could reasonably take a century, of course (and a century being roughly the span from 1498 to the 17th century). And generous given that, since the decline date is so easily found on a resource as common as Wikipedia, it's unlikely they are mistaken by not being erudite enough. The lack of elaborating temporal detail is even less damning, given the economy the article seems to want to take with words, sparing a mere two sentences on large swathes of history. With this sort of compact language, who can expect them to pedantically agonize over removing every possible divergent interpretation, and achieve unequivocal precision? I think the more likely situation is the article is perfectly accurate on that point, and you've simply read an inaccuracy into it by misinterpreting the authors' omission of absolute precision as error.

travisgriggs 5y ago

Hoped it was this: https://drpeppermuseum.com/history/ https://drpeppermuseum.com/history/ Oh well.

pacificmint 5y ago

Marjorie Shaffer wrote a whole book on the topic: "Pepper: A History of the World's Most Influential Spice" [1] If you are interested in learning more about the history of the spice trade, it's well worth a read. [1] https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250048660 https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250048660