More to black pepper than meets the taste buds

November 6, 12:33 PMFood ExaminerEric Burkett

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So unassuming but they bring so much to the table

Pepper, of “salt and pepper” fame, is so ubiquitous we barely give it any thought. Even if you’ve been sprinkling the stuff over your eggs all your life, however, it may still hold a few surprises.

Just as all different types of tea (Ceylon, Darjeeling, Oolong, etc.) come from the same plant, pretty much most of the peppers you find in the market come from the same source. Piper nigrum is the name for the plant that give us not only black pepper, but white and green pepper, as well. The difference, just as it is with those teas, is how the berries, or peppercorns, are processed.

Black pepper, appreciated for its pungency and heat, is picked when the berries are not quite ripe and then allowed to dry, whether in the sun or by mechanical means. The outside of the berry is the fruit of piper nigrum; an enzyme present in the berry already changes the berry from its original dark red to the more familiar black. Black pepper's spicy bite comes from piperine, an alkaloid which has been used in everything from traditional medicine to insecticides.

White pepper, a much underutilized spice in my opinion, comes from the seed of the ripe peppercorn without the outer layer present in its darker relation. According to Harold McGee’s “On Food and Cooking” , the berries are soaked in water for a week allowing bacteria to weaken their outer layer, which is then rubbed off and the peppers allowed to dry. The mellower white pepper is used more often in light colored sauces ; try it, too, instead of black pepper in mashed potatoes.

Green peppers are berries harvested before they begin to ripen. They’re treated with sulfur dioxide – a common preservative used in dried fruit – to prevent discoloration and then preserved.

Native to the mountainous regions of southern India, pepper is grown today primarily in India, Indonesia, and Brazil due to 18th century European efforts to expand the production of what had been, historically, a very rare and very valuable spice. Vietnam, growing in its importance as an exporter of the spice, has been working to enhance the image of its product around the world.