Black pepper

 ( Crops Originating From India ) 

The pepper drupes can also be dried in the sun or by machine for several days, during which the pepper skin around the seed shrinks and darkens into a thin, wrinkled black layer containing melanoidin. Once dry, the spice is called black peppercorn. After the peppercorns are dried, pepper powder for culinary uses is obtained by crushing the berries, which may also yield an essential oil by extract.

Ground white pepper is commonly used in Chinese cuisine, Thai cuisine, and Portuguese cuisines. It finds occasional use in other cuisines in salads, light-coloured sauces, and mashed potatoes as a substitute for black pepper, because black pepper would visibly stand out. However, white pepper lacks certain compounds present in the outer layer of the drupe, resulting in a different overall flavour.

Fresh, unpreserved green pepper drupes are used in some cuisines like Thai cuisine and Tamil cuisine. Their flavour has been described as "spicy and fresh", with a "bright aroma."Ochef, Using fresh green peppercorns . Retrieved 6 November 2005. They decay quickly if not dried or preserved, making them unsuitable for international shipping.

The bark of Drimys winteri ("canelo" or "winter's bark") is used as a substitute for pepper in cold and temperate regions of Chile and Argentina, where it is easily found and readily available. In New Zealand, the seeds of kawakawa ( Piper excelsum), a Piperaceae, are sometimes used as pepper; the leaves of Pseudowintera colorata ("mountain horopito") are another replacement for pepper. Several plants in the United States are also used as pepper substitutes, such as field pepperwort, least pepperwort, shepherd's purse, horseradish, and field pennycress.

Variants of Pepper.jpg|Six variants of peppercorns (two types of white and two types of black, based on region) Dried Peppercorns.jpg|alt=Black peppercorns and white peppercorns|Black and white peppercorns Dried red Kampot peppercorns.jpg|Dried red Kampot peppercorns Pimienta negra (Piper nigrum), 2020-06-12, DD 20-40 FS.jpg|Close-up of a peppercorn

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, the popularity of long pepper did not entirely decline until the discovery of the New World and of . Chili 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. Before the 16th century, pepper was being grown in Java, Sunda Islands, Sumatra, Madagascar, Malaysia, and everywhere in Southeast Asia. These areas traded mainly with China, or used the pepper locally.Dalby, p. 93. 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. The Maluku Islands, historically known as the "Spice Islands," are a region in Indonesia known for producing nutmeg, mace, cloves, and pepper, and were a major source of these spices in the world. The presence of these spices in the Maluku Islands sparked European interest to buy them directly in the 16th century.

Pepper (both long and black) was known in Greece at least as early as the fourth century BCE, though it was probably an uncommon and expensive item that only the very rich could afford.

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 direct to Chera dynasty 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 Greek geographer Strabo, the early empire sent a fleet of around 120 ships on an annual 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-Red Sea 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, Malabar 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 15 denarius 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 50 million sestertius", and further moralizes on pepper:

He does not state whether the 50 million was the actual amount of money which found its way to India or the total retail cost of the items in Rome, and, elsewhere, he cites a figure of 100 million sesterces.Young, p. 25.

Black pepper was a well-known and widespread, if expensive, seasoning in the Roman Empire. Apicius' De re coquinaria, a third-century cookbook probably based at least partly on one from the first 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".

A riddle authored by Saint Aldhelm, a seventh-century Bishop of Sherborne, sheds some light on black pepper's role in England at that time:

It is commonly believed that during the Middle Ages, pepper was often used to conceal the taste of partially rotten meat. No evidence supports this claim, and historians view it as highly unlikely; in the Middle Ages, pepper was a luxury good, affordable only to the wealthy, who certainly had unspoiled meat available, as well.Dalby, p. 156; also Turner, pp. 108–109, though Turner does go on to discuss spices (not pepper specifically) being used to disguise the taste of partially spoiled wine or ale. In addition, people of the time certainly knew that eating spoiled food would make them sick. 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 were common fare, especially in winter. However, pepper and other spices played a role in improving the taste of long-preserved meats.

Archaeological evidence of pepper consumption in late medieval Northern Europe comes from excavations on the Danish-Norwegian flagship, Gribshunden, which sank in the summer of 1495. In 2021, archaeologists recovered more than 2000 peppercorns from the wreck, along with a variety of other spices and exotic foodstuffs including clove, ginger, saffron, and almond. The ship was carrying King Hans to a political summit at the time of its loss. The spices were likely intended for feasts at the summit, which would have included the Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish Councils of State.

Its exorbitant price during the Middle Ages – and the monopoly on the trade held by Venice – was one of the inducements that led the Portugal to seek a sea route to India. In 1498, Vasco da Gama became the first person to reach India by sailing around Africa (see Age of Discovery); asked by Arabs in Kozhikode (who spoke Spanish and Italian) why they had come, his representative replied, "we seek Christians and spices".Prasad, p. 3. 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 eventually gained much greater control of trade on the Arabian Sea. The 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas granted Portugal exclusive rights to the half of the world where black pepper originated.

However, the Portuguese monopolized the spice trade for 150 years. Portuguese even became the lingua franca of the then known world. The spice trade made Portugal rich. However, in the 17th century, the Portuguese lost most of their valuable Indian Ocean trade to the Netherlands and the England, who, taking advantage of the Spanish rule over Portugal during the Iberian Union (1580–1640), occupied by force almost all Portuguese interests in the area. The pepper ports of Malabar began to trade increasingly with the Dutch in the period 1661–1663.7

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.Jaffee, p. 10.

In the third 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 fourth-century work describing a wide variety of spices from beyond China's southern border, including long pepper.Dalby, p. 77. 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 (Hangzhou): "... 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."Henry Yule; Cordier, Henri, Translation from The Travels of Marco Polo: The Complete Yule-Cordier Edition , Vol. 2, Dover. . p. 204.

During the course of the Ming treasure voyages in the early 15th century, Admiral Zheng He and his expeditionary fleets returned with such a large amount of black pepper that the once-costly luxury became a common commodity.

Pepper contains , including , , and .