Welcome to Salt & Pepper!
Black Peppercorns, Ready To Be Ground In An Old-Fashioned Way
A few thousand years ago someone in Southwest India tasted the dried fruit of the Piper Nigrum vine.
That fruit was a small berry about the size of a small pea; when dried, it is known as a black peppercorn.
What they discovered would become the most widely used and traded spice in the world.
Today, black peppercorns account for about 20% of the entire spice trade in the world.
The purpose of this site is to tell the story of the peppercorn.
The peppercorn has been used as a spice and a medicine for over 4000 years and has been cultivated since about 1000 B.C.
Black peppercorns have been used as money throughout history, and was literally worth its weight in gold at various times.
Spices including black pepper were once a luxury affordable only by the rich. Today you’ll find it on the table of most people in the world.
Once grown only along the Malabar Coast of India it is now grown mostly in the tropics, around the world. It is said that the closer to the Equator it is grown the hotter it is.
True peppercorns (Piper Nigrum) are available in four colors; green, black, white and red. They all come from the same vine and their color and taste are a result of when they are picked and how they are processed.
Green peppercorns are picked when they are full sized but still green, they are then boiled briefly and may be freeze dried, brined, or packed in water or vinegar.
Black peppercorns are allowed to become a bit more mature but not fully ripe. They are then boiled briefly, allowed to ferment and then dried either in the sun or in a kiln until they become dry, wrinkled and black.
White peppercorns are allowed to fully ripen, then are handled in a manner similar to black, they are then soaked in running water for about two weeks, then the fruit (pericarp) is removed leaving only the inner seed which is beige to white in color. It is then dried in a manner similar to black peppercorns.
Red peppercorns are allowed to fully ripen and then may be freeze dried or dried in a kiln, they are hard to find and are more expensive.
There are many other types of pepper that may or may not be related to true pepper, such as Long pepper, Cubeb pepper, Grains of Paradise, Szechuan pepper and pink pepper. They are used mostly as a pepper substitute and have different qualities in terms of taste and hotness.
There are also the chili peppers which are from an entirely different plant family, totally unrelated to peppercorn plants.
This looks like a mess!