September 11, 2023 • 26 mins
This spice is ubiquitous today, but throughout history it was a prized commodity, traded like gold and responsible for family fortunes. In this classic episode, Anney and Lauren explore where peppercorns come from, how they're processed, and why they became commonplace.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:09):
Hello, and welcome to Savor production of iHeartRadio. I'm Annie
Reese and I am alone. I am solo today, tragedy
of all tragedies. Lauren is in the midst of moving,
in the midst of fighting off sickness, and I thought,
you know, I'll just let's take one thing off of
(00:30):
her plate while still getting you something out there, a listeners,
because we love you. But yeah, it's just me with
the classic episode. And I can't ask Lauren why she
tues it because she's not here.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
I guess there are other ways I could.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
I could do this, the technology exists, but I like
going in the mystery of it, you know. But she
suggested this classic episode on black Pepper, which is a
really fun one and it does go into all sorts
of places that I had not anticipated, as with a
(01:07):
lot of these episodes. And I believe, as I mentioned
in here, every time I hear the name Pepper, I
think of my next door neighbor's dog who I used
to dog sit and he.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
Was super cute.
Speaker 1 (01:19):
But Pepper is definitely something I use. Black Pepper is
definitely something I use pretty much every day. As mentioned
in our recent salts Classic Someone Got Me a comically
large canister of it recently. But I also have some
fancy black peppers. I like to mix it up every
now and then. But yeah, please enjoy this classic episode.
(01:41):
Let us let pass Annie and Lauren take it away. Hello,
and welcome to food Stuff.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
I'm Annie Reese.
Speaker 3 (01:57):
And I'm Lauren vocal bam and day. We're talking about peppercorns, Yes,
black pepper kind of mostly yeah, mostly ish ish.
Speaker 1 (02:10):
Lately, I've I've been thinking a lot about black pepper
in a weird way. Yeah, in a weird way, yes,
very strange. No, I was just curious about how almost
every recipe I feel like calls for salt black pepper.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
Yeah, yeah, I.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
Just got to wondering why, and I think we do
kind of get to the bottom of it.
Speaker 3 (02:31):
We do, we do. Yeah, in my household, we so
frequently run out of black pepper corns because we have
a grinder. We so frequently run out that. Like, I've
gone through several tins of white pepper because I have,
for some reason, just this enormous quantity of ground white
pepper in my I don't know, I guess I've just
a mystery. Yeah, it's like ginger like sometimes you just buy.
(02:53):
I don't know. You don't know.
Speaker 1 (02:57):
Clearly I did accidentally buy.
Speaker 2 (03:01):
I can't even guess how much it is.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
I bought garlic powder from Amazon Prime and apparently the
only ship in the size that's you can't see it,
but it's bigger than my head.
Speaker 3 (03:12):
Oh wow.
Speaker 1 (03:13):
Uh, So I have garlic powder, probably for the next.
Speaker 2 (03:17):
Year or so.
Speaker 3 (03:18):
It's good to have plenty.
Speaker 1 (03:19):
You're yeah, yes, yeah, I suppose so rich in garlic powder. Yes,
I'm not rich in many ways, but I am rich
with garlic powder. But anyway, Uh, pepper, Yeah, what is it?
Speaker 3 (03:35):
Pepper corns are the fruit and seed of a tropical
climbing vine, the piper nigrim. Dry them out, grind them up,
put them in everything. Yep, they'll add a spicy, hot,
pikened flavor experience.
Speaker 2 (03:49):
That's a pretty good description, Lauren. Thank you.
Speaker 1 (03:52):
There's any company out there that needs a description for
their pepper products, I think Lauren just wrote it for you.
Speaker 3 (03:58):
Call me all rights reserved.
Speaker 1 (04:02):
Black pepper is native to a southwestern Indian province called
Kerala and other parts of Southeast Southeast Asia like Malaysia, Thailand,
and Vietnam. Most pepper production falls between twenty degrees north
and twenty degrees south of the equator.
Speaker 2 (04:18):
It likes a tropical, wet.
Speaker 3 (04:20):
Climate, cannot stand freezing temperatures.
Speaker 1 (04:23):
And as we mentioned, we're mainly going to be talking
about black pepper today, but there are other types. As
you might guess, there's green, there's white, there's long.
Speaker 3 (04:34):
For black pepper, you pick the fruit when they're mature
but still green, not fully ripe yet. You dry them,
during which they oxidize and may vary lightly ferment. Whoa,
they'll wrinkle up and turn from green to black and
presto peppercorns and all their floral pickaned, pungent, spicy glory.
Green pepper is harvested even before black pepper, when the
(04:57):
fruit is not yet fully grown. Pick or otherwise preserve
these and then eat them whole, cooked in two dishes,
more like a nut or a vegetable than a dry spice.
Speaker 2 (05:06):
Oh yeah.
Speaker 3 (05:08):
White pepper is made by letting the fruit mature on
the vines until it's red and ripe, and then harvesting
and soaking them in water to let the fruit ferment
for up to two weeks. Does this mean bacteria poop?
Speaker 2 (05:23):
Bacteria poop? Then yay?
Speaker 3 (05:26):
The flesh of the fruit will fall away, and then
you dry and grind up the white seeds. It's a
little bit stronger white pepper than black pepper, and can
have flavors that develop during the fermentation process, including sort
of like funky or cheesy notes. Oh really, long pepper
is a different species Piper lungum, and it's a clustered
(05:47):
spear of smaller berries that all dry up together and
are sold whole. A listener sent to some once. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
They were favored by ancient Romans over round peppercorns and
are a little bit more bitter. They actually remind me
of like Agnostora bitters a little bit. There's there's something
again floral and almost Christmassy in there to my palate.
Speaker 2 (06:09):
Uh huh.
Speaker 3 (06:10):
And yes, I went into my kitchen and nod on
a long peppercorn while I was writing this last night.
Speaker 2 (06:15):
Oh, I was hoping it was night.
Speaker 1 (06:17):
I was hoping it was like the montage in a
movie where the main character can't sleep.
Speaker 3 (06:22):
Oh yeah, no, of course, this is like one in
the morning.
Speaker 2 (06:25):
Excellence, excellence.
Speaker 3 (06:28):
Piper niagram and piper longhum are not closely related, however,
to chili peppers. Or two sush one peppers or two
pink peppercorns, all of which do have a similar effect
on the palette, but which come from different plant families.
The pepper and pepper spray also is not from piper niagrim,
but rather from chili peppers capsicum.
Speaker 1 (06:50):
Yes, this was a question I had recently. Yeah, and
Lauren answered it for me right there.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
Thank you, Lauren.
Speaker 3 (06:57):
Now I know that effect that pepper coins have. Yes,
Pepper's main active ingredient is piperine. It's a stimulant and
irritant of nerve endings in both your mouth and your nose,
which is why pepper feels hot on the tongue and
lips and can make you sneeze when you breathe it
in through your nose. Research is also found twenty five
(07:18):
other key pungent and tingling phytochemicals in.
Speaker 1 (07:22):
Pepper, tingling, phido chemicals, tingling, Why goodness.
Speaker 2 (07:28):
Is it not?
Speaker 1 (07:29):
And air?
Speaker 2 (07:29):
Is it just me? Or is it the pepper?
Speaker 3 (07:32):
Is it just The phytochemicals could be anything? Well. One
of those is rotundon, which is also responsible for the
peppery flavors in wines.
Speaker 2 (07:40):
Oh, thank you rotundone.
Speaker 3 (07:43):
And how it's grown, so okay, I guess that maybe
at the top of this I should have explained what
a pepper plant looks like. Pepper vines for cultivation grow
to about three feet or or nine meters long, and
they're grown on either trellises or other support plants and
various crop trees stuff like that. And the flowers and
then the berries grow in these kind of clustery spears
(08:05):
that look a little bit like like miniature grapes. They
grow green and then color red as they ripen. The
leaves and berries aren't really bothered by pests because they're
so pungent, but the roots are subject to a few
pests and diseases when you're growing them. They're harvested by hand,
often by small scale farmers who tend to sell them
to larger farms or collectors who then sell them to
(08:28):
big distributors and exporters. And unfortunately, these strata of labor
mean the big companies like for example, AVT McCormick, are
not directly responsible for either a farm labor conditions only
like supplier and processor conditions or b farmer's income. There
are some fair trade initiatives in place, but according to
(08:50):
a report in The Ecologist. The big companies don't always
separate out fair trade peppercorns from non fair trade when
they receive these batches from suppliers, so it's hard to
know what you're getting unless you really do your homework,
like crazy hard.
Speaker 1 (09:06):
Yeah, that is unfortunately true for a lot of not
only foods, but particularly I find spices. Absolutely, yeah, some
pepper corn numbers. Some things I read called pepper the
world's most used spice, and it once made up seventy
percent of the international spice trade. In twenty thirteen, Vietnam
(09:30):
was the largest producer of pepper, exporting about one hundred
and thirty five thousand tons valued in the nine hundred
million dollar range. That same year, Americans consumed about twenty
seven thousand tons of black pepper.
Speaker 3 (09:46):
However, pepper can be a volatile market, which is almost
a pun about volatile colm.
Speaker 2 (09:53):
Anyway, almost fun.
Speaker 3 (09:55):
In the twenty odds, prices per kilo of pepper dropped
by eighty percent in like just a few years, and
prices are back up since then. But it is apparently
one of the least predictable commodities.
Speaker 2 (10:07):
Really, huh.
Speaker 3 (10:10):
The history of the pepper is also a little bit volatile,
that is true. And we'll get to that as soon
as we take a quick break for a word from
our sponsor and we're back. Thank you, sponsor, Yes, thank you.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
All right.
Speaker 1 (10:35):
Some pepper history history, pepper throughout pepper so close. We're
making the almost puns today, we're working towards it. Archaeological
evidence discovered in India indicate that the pepper was around
in the area by two thousand BCE. Histories are fairly
(10:55):
certain pepper was traded even back then. But once they
do know for certain is that sometime around thirteen hundred BCE,
black peppercorns were stuffed in the nostrils of Ramses, the
greats mummified body. Huh yeah, there you go.
Speaker 2 (11:12):
Mm hm.
Speaker 1 (11:13):
Pepper was a part of the Chinese diet by second
century BCE, and traders from southern Arabia pretty much monopolized
the spice trade as far back as one thousand BCE,
which we briefly touched on in our cinnamon episode. And
like we talked about in that episode, these traders loved
(11:34):
to tell tales, tall tales about how difficult spices were
to procure to discourage competition. Oh, pepper was no different.
To get to a pepper pit, you were going to
have to go through a dragon first. Yes, dragons are real,
and the guard dragon pits with pepper and them.
Speaker 2 (11:54):
You heard it here.
Speaker 1 (11:54):
First, here's another pepper myth created by traders.
Speaker 2 (11:59):
Quote.
Speaker 1 (12:00):
In order to harvest the pepper, the trees have to
be burned, driving the poisonous snakes away and in the
process turning the originally white fruit. Yeah. I wouldn't want
to mess with that now. Ancient Greek and Roman records
mentioned pepper, though.
Speaker 3 (12:17):
Through perhaps three hundred BC or so, it was considered
best used as an antidote, not food stuff. According to Theophrastus.
Speaker 2 (12:25):
Hm hmmm.
Speaker 1 (12:27):
The first century CE Roman cookbook Atpikios called for the
spice in four fists of its recipes.
Speaker 2 (12:34):
Ooh yeah.
Speaker 1 (12:35):
It was used particularly to flavor meats that were dried
or salted. Emperor Marcus Aurelius excused imported black pepper from
customs tax. But you know who wasn't on board, Oh,
our good friend Pliny the Elder.
Speaker 3 (12:52):
Pliny, Yes, what are you doing?
Speaker 1 (12:54):
He wrote? Whereas pepper has nothing in it that can
plead as a recommendation to either fruit are berry, It's
only desirable quality being.
Speaker 2 (13:03):
A certain pungency.
Speaker 1 (13:05):
And yet it is for this that we import it
all the way from India.
Speaker 2 (13:09):
Exclamation points.
Speaker 3 (13:12):
It's incredulity from plenty.
Speaker 1 (13:13):
He does, not having it, apparently not yet import.
Speaker 2 (13:17):
It from India. Rome did.
Speaker 1 (13:19):
And when the Vizigas laid siege to the city and
four ten Ce, along with gold, silver and silk, Rome
offered three thousand pounds of pepper to get them to
back off.
Speaker 2 (13:31):
But it didn't work.
Speaker 1 (13:32):
No, no, not at all. I'm sure they were tempted
by the pepper.
Speaker 3 (13:36):
Along these lines, Emperor Theodosius the third is said to
have sent a bale of pepper to Attila, a bale
of pepper of the hun fame, and historians think that
as much as folks did love pepper, a lot of
these large gifts of peppercorns must have been more symbolic
than anything else, as they would have gone stale before
they could have possibly been used. Pepper does have a
(13:59):
strong flavor, so it might have been considered symbolic of
power and aggression and virility.
Speaker 2 (14:05):
That's right.
Speaker 1 (14:07):
Rome wasn't the only European country that doug pepper. English
King Ethel read the second demanded ten pounds of pepper
as a sort of tax before he'd allow German spice
traders conduct any business in London in tenth century CE.
In eleven eighty C, a pepper's Guild was founded in
London that would eventually become the Grocer's Company. These first
(14:30):
pepperers functioned at first like the spice versions of alchemists
at apothecaries would later.
Speaker 2 (14:38):
And there's a.
Speaker 1 (14:38):
Spice girl's joke in there's somewhere.
Speaker 2 (14:40):
I know it.
Speaker 1 (14:42):
I just didn't have time to write it, but it's there.
Speaker 3 (14:45):
The spice versions of themselves.
Speaker 2 (14:46):
Yes, mm hmm.
Speaker 1 (14:48):
Marco Polo observed a whole bunch of pepper when he
arrived at Java in twelve EIGHTYCE, and control of the
pepper trade routes fragmented during medieval times, with Muslim traders
maintaining control over the Middle leg, But once the spices
reached the Mediterranean, Italian city states like Venice took over
(15:08):
four hundred tons of pepper a year was going through
Venice by fifteenth century, which merchants marked up forty percent,
well speaking of forty percent, over forty percent of all
value that entered another Italian city state Genoa was due
to pepper by the fourteenth century CE. Because of the
distance involved shipping, pepper was very expensive. To this day,
(15:32):
pepper expensive is a phrase in Dutch.
Speaker 3 (15:36):
And in French che cobvoi. Pepper was mentioned in dowries,
ransoms and fines of the times. Wow, you could pay
for lots of stuff in pepper.
Speaker 1 (15:46):
Then get a ransom note and it says it's like,
give me some pepper, give me to leave ten bounds
of pepper or else.
Speaker 3 (15:51):
Yeah, you'll never see never see him again.
Speaker 2 (15:55):
Oh my goodness.
Speaker 1 (15:56):
Wow, so expensive was pepper of spices. At the time,
it was one of the things European explorers were hoping
to find when they set off in search of new worlds.
Speaker 2 (16:07):
Columbus good Gravy.
Speaker 1 (16:09):
There he is again brought back what he thought was
loads of pepper from West Indies, only to find on
his return he'd actually been transporting the unvalued chili peppers.
Speaker 2 (16:20):
Oh poor Columbus.
Speaker 1 (16:21):
Well well. Portuguese explorer of Vasco de Gama embarked on
a mission from his king to find quote Christians and spices.
He seemed to have succeeded, and Portugal overtook the rest
of the world to control the spice trade. By the
fifteen hundreds, they lost about a third of their trade
ships along the way, though, But hey, you gotta get
some of that sweet, sweet, our, savory savory pepper. Yeah,
(16:44):
and get some They did too, to the tune of
two million kilograms of pepper from India imported annually. But
Portugal solowly lost control of the trade to the Dutch
in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, particularly in the Big
spice calm. That didn't last too long, though, and the
British usurped control from the Dutch with the British East
(17:06):
India Company. It was around this time, though, that pepper
lost a bit of its economic punch with the discovery
of chili peppers.
Speaker 3 (17:14):
Which apparently did not go unvalued forever and ever.
Speaker 1 (17:17):
Yes, yeah, times change, but pepper didn't stay down for long.
It made a comeback with the help of King Louis,
the fourteenth Royal chefs. The king was a bit persnickety
when it came to food, and he preferred very little seasoning,
ah very little, to the point that he forbade the
use of spices outside of salt, pepper and parsley.
Speaker 2 (17:39):
That's it.
Speaker 3 (17:39):
Huh.
Speaker 1 (17:40):
Once again, this royal food preference spread from the aristocracy
and from there to anyone could afford it, people trying
to emulate royalty. And this helped lead salt and pepper
being to the two spices you're pretty much guaranteed to
find on tables in the West. Yeah, because one king
was very particular about his diet.
Speaker 3 (18:01):
It makes so much strange sense, I know, right. Yeah.
Starting in seventeen ninety seven, Salem, Massachusetts, became the seat
of a multimillion dollar pepper trade. That's when one captain
Jonathan Carnes found a route to the island of Sumatra
in present day Indonesia, thus bypassing the whole English, Dutch,
(18:21):
et cetera mess, and he successfully brought a cargo of pepper
back home at a seven hundred percent return on investment
worth some one point five million dollars or so in
today's money.
Speaker 2 (18:33):
Is quite the pepper trade. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (18:35):
He managed to make one more voyage before other Salem
shipmasters discovered his route, kickstarting decades of hugely profitable, if
hugely dangerous pepper business. There was apparently a whole lot
of like pirting and kidnapping and ransoming around and on Sumatra,
but the pepper trade through Salem was nonetheless really huge.
(18:56):
Their captains and traders formed the Salem East Indian Society
and exported their pepper through the United States but also
throughout Europe, and expanded their trade to other products, including
curiosities aka artifacts, riding the wave of popular Asian exoticism
that was happening in the eighteenth century or a nineteenth
(19:16):
century rather sorry, and these from all over Indonesia, India,
and China. The first live elephant in America stepped ashore
in Salem. Really all of this made Salem the wealthiest
city per capita in the United States by the early
eighteen hundreds. Salem City seal still bears the image of
a native Sumatran along with the Latin four to the
(19:39):
farthest port of the rich East. I did not know those,
I know right, and they would hold the trade until
the eighteen forties, when a whole number of factors like
a bunch of destruction to their ships from the War
of eighteen twelve and a trade competition from larger cities
harbors that had better rail routes leading inland like a
(19:59):
New York City and boss and would decrease the profitability
of their pepper trade, and as with many spices, this
widespread competition, along with a bunch of collaboration from the
farmers and suppliers in the places where pepper was grown
to increase their crops, would turn pepper from a luxury
to an everyday affordability in the mid eighteen hundreds.
Speaker 2 (20:21):
Yep, and now it's everywhere.
Speaker 3 (20:24):
Yep. You get it for free in little knife and
fork plastic packets. Yeah, just in case emergency pepper, emergency pepper.
Speaker 1 (20:35):
You never know. I really want to try that sneeze thing. Now,
that was another big question I had. That was really true.
Speaker 3 (20:41):
Yeah, it'll totally make you sneeze. And it has a
few other medical uses than just making you sneeze. Oh
it does. We will get to those after one last
quick break for a word from our sponsor.
Speaker 2 (21:05):
And we're back. Thank you, sponsor, Yes, thank you.
Speaker 1 (21:09):
Pepper has been used medicinally and I can hear your
surprise from here, No way I can, including, according to
the Encyclopedia Britannica, for flatulence relief and to simulate gastric secretions.
Speaker 3 (21:25):
Hmm, yeah, get you juices flow on.
Speaker 2 (21:27):
Sure. That's a very nice way of putting it. Mm hmm.
Speaker 1 (21:31):
Throughout history, various types of pepper have been used to
treat things like hernia's, heart disease, joint pain, I infections,
excess flynn, constipation and diarrhea.
Speaker 3 (21:40):
Also flu by grains, anxiety, depression, gastric worms, strapped throat coma, cholera, boils,
night blindness, epilepsy, tooth decay, hepatitis, and syphilis coma.
Speaker 2 (21:52):
They're trying to get you to sneeze out of the coma.
Speaker 3 (21:54):
I think so.
Speaker 2 (21:55):
Yeah, but these smelling salts yeah.
Speaker 1 (21:57):
Oh, and also we can't forget it was thought to
elevate virility.
Speaker 3 (22:02):
Everything's inn aphrodisiac.
Speaker 1 (22:04):
Oh, including spam. Somebody scentis a link? Well what, yes,
I can't believe we didn't discover this in our episode.
Speaker 2 (22:10):
I I just moved.
Speaker 3 (22:12):
I just moved bodily back away from the microphone in shock. Okay,
that's a great listener mail that I look forward to
reading backed pepper modernly uh piperine, which is that that
key ingredient in pepper has been investigated for some of
those potential medical uses that have been floating around in
(22:34):
traditional medicine for literal ages and in various human studies.
Piperine has indeed been found to have anti inflammatory, anti carcinogenic,
anti asmatic, antioxidant, and even anti diabetic effects, among others.
But unfortunately, piperine is only slightly soluble in water, so
(22:54):
it's not readily bioavailable to our cells. It's hard for
our bodies to use, and research is ongoing about its
possible medicinal uses and better ways for our bodies to
get at it, which involve like nanoparticle encapsulation in matrices
of lipids, which is pretty great.
Speaker 2 (23:12):
That is excellent.
Speaker 3 (23:14):
It's also been shown to inhibit the growth pepper in general.
Pepper has also been shown to inhibit the growth of
some twenty five percent of the microbes that lead to
food spoilage, which make it indeed a worthy culinary ingredient,
especially during humanity's long history pre refrigeration. Yeah for meats
(23:34):
and stuff like that. And pepper is also currently being
investigated for some of its terpenes, which are these flavor
compounds that bind with receptors in the brain that may
interact with other drugs like cannabis to help lessen unwanted effects,
such as in the example of cannabis anxiety.
Speaker 2 (23:55):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (23:56):
I saw that a note in the outline before you
filled it out, and I was very intrigued.
Speaker 2 (24:01):
I think it just said weed anxiety.
Speaker 3 (24:05):
It was one of the things that popped up when
I was researching.
Speaker 1 (24:08):
I was like, all right, Wow, who knew pepper?
Speaker 3 (24:12):
People are on the case.
Speaker 2 (24:13):
People are on the case. That's also a little bit.
Speaker 3 (24:17):
Of an episode preview. We've had it in another few weeks,
not extremely soon, in another month or so. We're plotting
an episode about about edibles.
Speaker 2 (24:28):
Yes, of the weed variety.
Speaker 3 (24:31):
Indeed.
Speaker 1 (24:34):
So that's that's Pepper and a little A side note
is my neighbor's next door they were named their dog
was named Pepper.
Speaker 3 (24:44):
Huh.
Speaker 1 (24:44):
Yeah, And I totally forgot about it in this whole episode.
I keep thinking about every time we see.
Speaker 3 (24:50):
You think about the dog.
Speaker 1 (24:51):
Oh, he was a Sweetheartady got hit by a car.
Speaker 3 (24:53):
But this is a roller.
Speaker 2 (25:01):
That was the end.
Speaker 3 (25:03):
Oh that's nice.
Speaker 1 (25:04):
And I'm I'm discovering because I have another friend I
mentioned in Garlic their dog is named Garlic.
Speaker 2 (25:10):
Yeah, so maybe spices are good pet names?
Speaker 3 (25:13):
Good pet names? Uh, definitely send us pictures of your
pets if they're named after food items. Yes, I mean
send us pictures of your pets anyway, Like I just
want to look at pets all day.
Speaker 1 (25:27):
And that brings us to the end of this classic episode.
We hope that you enjoyed it as much as we
enjoyed doing it. And yeah, let us all wish Lauren
happy knew how home. I can't wait to see it.
I'm going to make her watch the Star Wars Holiday
special Don't Tell.
Speaker 2 (25:46):
Her and Speedy Recovery.
Speaker 1 (25:50):
And yes, as always, we would love to hear from
you listeners about this or anything else. And I'm going
to try to do this. I don't know if I've
ever done it myself, but here we go. You can
email us at Hello at savorpod dot com. You can
also find us on social media on Facebook, Twitter, and
Instagram at saver pod. We would love to hear from you,
(26:13):
savor As a protection of iHeartRadio. For a podcasts on iHeartRadio,
you can check out the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or
regular listen to your favorite shows. Thanks as always to
our super producers Andrew Howard and Dylan Fagan. Thanks to
you for listening, and we hope that lots more good
things are coming your way.
Hello, and welcome to Savor production of iHeartRadio. I'm Annie
Reese and I am alone. I am solo today, tragedy
of all tragedies. Lauren is in the midst of moving,
in the midst of fighting off sickness, and I thought,
you know, I'll just let's take one thing off of
(00:30):
her plate while still getting you something out there, a listeners,
because we love you. But yeah, it's just me with
the classic episode. And I can't ask Lauren why she
tues it because she's not here.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
I guess there are other ways I could.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
I could do this, the technology exists, but I like
going in the mystery of it, you know. But she
suggested this classic episode on black Pepper, which is a
really fun one and it does go into all sorts
of places that I had not anticipated, as with a
(01:07):
lot of these episodes. And I believe, as I mentioned
in here, every time I hear the name Pepper, I
think of my next door neighbor's dog who I used
to dog sit and he.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
Was super cute.
Speaker 1 (01:19):
But Pepper is definitely something I use. Black Pepper is
definitely something I use pretty much every day. As mentioned
in our recent salts Classic Someone Got Me a comically
large canister of it recently. But I also have some
fancy black peppers. I like to mix it up every
now and then. But yeah, please enjoy this classic episode.
(01:41):
Let us let pass Annie and Lauren take it away. Hello,
and welcome to food Stuff.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
I'm Annie Reese.
Speaker 3 (01:57):
And I'm Lauren vocal bam and day. We're talking about peppercorns, Yes,
black pepper kind of mostly yeah, mostly ish ish.
Speaker 1 (02:10):
Lately, I've I've been thinking a lot about black pepper
in a weird way. Yeah, in a weird way, yes,
very strange. No, I was just curious about how almost
every recipe I feel like calls for salt black pepper.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
Yeah, yeah, I.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
Just got to wondering why, and I think we do
kind of get to the bottom of it.
Speaker 3 (02:31):
We do, we do. Yeah, in my household, we so
frequently run out of black pepper corns because we have
a grinder. We so frequently run out that. Like, I've
gone through several tins of white pepper because I have,
for some reason, just this enormous quantity of ground white
pepper in my I don't know, I guess I've just
a mystery. Yeah, it's like ginger like sometimes you just buy.
(02:53):
I don't know. You don't know.
Speaker 1 (02:57):
Clearly I did accidentally buy.
Speaker 2 (03:01):
I can't even guess how much it is.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
I bought garlic powder from Amazon Prime and apparently the
only ship in the size that's you can't see it,
but it's bigger than my head.
Speaker 3 (03:12):
Oh wow.
Speaker 1 (03:13):
Uh, So I have garlic powder, probably for the next.
Speaker 2 (03:17):
Year or so.
Speaker 3 (03:18):
It's good to have plenty.
Speaker 1 (03:19):
You're yeah, yes, yeah, I suppose so rich in garlic powder. Yes,
I'm not rich in many ways, but I am rich
with garlic powder. But anyway, Uh, pepper, Yeah, what is it?
Speaker 3 (03:35):
Pepper corns are the fruit and seed of a tropical
climbing vine, the piper nigrim. Dry them out, grind them up,
put them in everything. Yep, they'll add a spicy, hot,
pikened flavor experience.
Speaker 2 (03:49):
That's a pretty good description, Lauren. Thank you.
Speaker 1 (03:52):
There's any company out there that needs a description for
their pepper products, I think Lauren just wrote it for you.
Speaker 3 (03:58):
Call me all rights reserved.
Speaker 1 (04:02):
Black pepper is native to a southwestern Indian province called
Kerala and other parts of Southeast Southeast Asia like Malaysia, Thailand,
and Vietnam. Most pepper production falls between twenty degrees north
and twenty degrees south of the equator.
Speaker 2 (04:18):
It likes a tropical, wet.
Speaker 3 (04:20):
Climate, cannot stand freezing temperatures.
Speaker 1 (04:23):
And as we mentioned, we're mainly going to be talking
about black pepper today, but there are other types. As
you might guess, there's green, there's white, there's long.
Speaker 3 (04:34):
For black pepper, you pick the fruit when they're mature
but still green, not fully ripe yet. You dry them,
during which they oxidize and may vary lightly ferment. Whoa,
they'll wrinkle up and turn from green to black and
presto peppercorns and all their floral pickaned, pungent, spicy glory.
Green pepper is harvested even before black pepper, when the
(04:57):
fruit is not yet fully grown. Pick or otherwise preserve
these and then eat them whole, cooked in two dishes,
more like a nut or a vegetable than a dry spice.
Speaker 2 (05:06):
Oh yeah.
Speaker 3 (05:08):
White pepper is made by letting the fruit mature on
the vines until it's red and ripe, and then harvesting
and soaking them in water to let the fruit ferment
for up to two weeks. Does this mean bacteria poop?
Speaker 2 (05:23):
Bacteria poop? Then yay?
Speaker 3 (05:26):
The flesh of the fruit will fall away, and then
you dry and grind up the white seeds. It's a
little bit stronger white pepper than black pepper, and can
have flavors that develop during the fermentation process, including sort
of like funky or cheesy notes. Oh really, long pepper
is a different species Piper lungum, and it's a clustered
(05:47):
spear of smaller berries that all dry up together and
are sold whole. A listener sent to some once. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
They were favored by ancient Romans over round peppercorns and
are a little bit more bitter. They actually remind me
of like Agnostora bitters a little bit. There's there's something
again floral and almost Christmassy in there to my palate.
Speaker 2 (06:09):
Uh huh.
Speaker 3 (06:10):
And yes, I went into my kitchen and nod on
a long peppercorn while I was writing this last night.
Speaker 2 (06:15):
Oh, I was hoping it was night.
Speaker 1 (06:17):
I was hoping it was like the montage in a
movie where the main character can't sleep.
Speaker 3 (06:22):
Oh yeah, no, of course, this is like one in
the morning.
Speaker 2 (06:25):
Excellence, excellence.
Speaker 3 (06:28):
Piper niagram and piper longhum are not closely related, however,
to chili peppers. Or two sush one peppers or two
pink peppercorns, all of which do have a similar effect
on the palette, but which come from different plant families.
The pepper and pepper spray also is not from piper niagrim,
but rather from chili peppers capsicum.
Speaker 1 (06:50):
Yes, this was a question I had recently. Yeah, and
Lauren answered it for me right there.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
Thank you, Lauren.
Speaker 3 (06:57):
Now I know that effect that pepper coins have. Yes,
Pepper's main active ingredient is piperine. It's a stimulant and
irritant of nerve endings in both your mouth and your nose,
which is why pepper feels hot on the tongue and
lips and can make you sneeze when you breathe it
in through your nose. Research is also found twenty five
(07:18):
other key pungent and tingling phytochemicals in.
Speaker 1 (07:22):
Pepper, tingling, phido chemicals, tingling, Why goodness.
Speaker 2 (07:28):
Is it not?
Speaker 1 (07:29):
And air?
Speaker 2 (07:29):
Is it just me? Or is it the pepper?
Speaker 3 (07:32):
Is it just The phytochemicals could be anything? Well. One
of those is rotundon, which is also responsible for the
peppery flavors in wines.
Speaker 2 (07:40):
Oh, thank you rotundone.
Speaker 3 (07:43):
And how it's grown, so okay, I guess that maybe
at the top of this I should have explained what
a pepper plant looks like. Pepper vines for cultivation grow
to about three feet or or nine meters long, and
they're grown on either trellises or other support plants and
various crop trees stuff like that. And the flowers and
then the berries grow in these kind of clustery spears
(08:05):
that look a little bit like like miniature grapes. They
grow green and then color red as they ripen. The
leaves and berries aren't really bothered by pests because they're
so pungent, but the roots are subject to a few
pests and diseases when you're growing them. They're harvested by hand,
often by small scale farmers who tend to sell them
to larger farms or collectors who then sell them to
(08:28):
big distributors and exporters. And unfortunately, these strata of labor
mean the big companies like for example, AVT McCormick, are
not directly responsible for either a farm labor conditions only
like supplier and processor conditions or b farmer's income. There
are some fair trade initiatives in place, but according to
(08:50):
a report in The Ecologist. The big companies don't always
separate out fair trade peppercorns from non fair trade when
they receive these batches from suppliers, so it's hard to
know what you're getting unless you really do your homework,
like crazy hard.
Speaker 1 (09:06):
Yeah, that is unfortunately true for a lot of not
only foods, but particularly I find spices. Absolutely, yeah, some
pepper corn numbers. Some things I read called pepper the
world's most used spice, and it once made up seventy
percent of the international spice trade. In twenty thirteen, Vietnam
(09:30):
was the largest producer of pepper, exporting about one hundred
and thirty five thousand tons valued in the nine hundred
million dollar range. That same year, Americans consumed about twenty
seven thousand tons of black pepper.
Speaker 3 (09:46):
However, pepper can be a volatile market, which is almost
a pun about volatile colm.
Speaker 2 (09:53):
Anyway, almost fun.
Speaker 3 (09:55):
In the twenty odds, prices per kilo of pepper dropped
by eighty percent in like just a few years, and
prices are back up since then. But it is apparently
one of the least predictable commodities.
Speaker 2 (10:07):
Really, huh.
Speaker 3 (10:10):
The history of the pepper is also a little bit volatile,
that is true. And we'll get to that as soon
as we take a quick break for a word from
our sponsor and we're back. Thank you, sponsor, Yes, thank you.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
All right.
Speaker 1 (10:35):
Some pepper history history, pepper throughout pepper so close. We're
making the almost puns today, we're working towards it. Archaeological
evidence discovered in India indicate that the pepper was around
in the area by two thousand BCE. Histories are fairly
(10:55):
certain pepper was traded even back then. But once they
do know for certain is that sometime around thirteen hundred BCE,
black peppercorns were stuffed in the nostrils of Ramses, the
greats mummified body. Huh yeah, there you go.
Speaker 2 (11:12):
Mm hm.
Speaker 1 (11:13):
Pepper was a part of the Chinese diet by second
century BCE, and traders from southern Arabia pretty much monopolized
the spice trade as far back as one thousand BCE,
which we briefly touched on in our cinnamon episode. And
like we talked about in that episode, these traders loved
(11:34):
to tell tales, tall tales about how difficult spices were
to procure to discourage competition. Oh, pepper was no different.
To get to a pepper pit, you were going to
have to go through a dragon first. Yes, dragons are real,
and the guard dragon pits with pepper and them.
Speaker 2 (11:54):
You heard it here.
Speaker 1 (11:54):
First, here's another pepper myth created by traders.
Speaker 2 (11:59):
Quote.
Speaker 1 (12:00):
In order to harvest the pepper, the trees have to
be burned, driving the poisonous snakes away and in the
process turning the originally white fruit. Yeah. I wouldn't want
to mess with that now. Ancient Greek and Roman records
mentioned pepper, though.
Speaker 3 (12:17):
Through perhaps three hundred BC or so, it was considered
best used as an antidote, not food stuff. According to Theophrastus.
Speaker 2 (12:25):
Hm hmmm.
Speaker 1 (12:27):
The first century CE Roman cookbook Atpikios called for the
spice in four fists of its recipes.
Speaker 2 (12:34):
Ooh yeah.
Speaker 1 (12:35):
It was used particularly to flavor meats that were dried
or salted. Emperor Marcus Aurelius excused imported black pepper from
customs tax. But you know who wasn't on board, Oh,
our good friend Pliny the Elder.
Speaker 3 (12:52):
Pliny, Yes, what are you doing?
Speaker 1 (12:54):
He wrote? Whereas pepper has nothing in it that can
plead as a recommendation to either fruit are berry, It's
only desirable quality being.
Speaker 2 (13:03):
A certain pungency.
Speaker 1 (13:05):
And yet it is for this that we import it
all the way from India.
Speaker 2 (13:09):
Exclamation points.
Speaker 3 (13:12):
It's incredulity from plenty.
Speaker 1 (13:13):
He does, not having it, apparently not yet import.
Speaker 2 (13:17):
It from India. Rome did.
Speaker 1 (13:19):
And when the Vizigas laid siege to the city and
four ten Ce, along with gold, silver and silk, Rome
offered three thousand pounds of pepper to get them to
back off.
Speaker 2 (13:31):
But it didn't work.
Speaker 1 (13:32):
No, no, not at all. I'm sure they were tempted
by the pepper.
Speaker 3 (13:36):
Along these lines, Emperor Theodosius the third is said to
have sent a bale of pepper to Attila, a bale
of pepper of the hun fame, and historians think that
as much as folks did love pepper, a lot of
these large gifts of peppercorns must have been more symbolic
than anything else, as they would have gone stale before
they could have possibly been used. Pepper does have a
(13:59):
strong flavor, so it might have been considered symbolic of
power and aggression and virility.
Speaker 2 (14:05):
That's right.
Speaker 1 (14:07):
Rome wasn't the only European country that doug pepper. English
King Ethel read the second demanded ten pounds of pepper
as a sort of tax before he'd allow German spice
traders conduct any business in London in tenth century CE.
In eleven eighty C, a pepper's Guild was founded in
London that would eventually become the Grocer's Company. These first
(14:30):
pepperers functioned at first like the spice versions of alchemists
at apothecaries would later.
Speaker 2 (14:38):
And there's a.
Speaker 1 (14:38):
Spice girl's joke in there's somewhere.
Speaker 2 (14:40):
I know it.
Speaker 1 (14:42):
I just didn't have time to write it, but it's there.
Speaker 3 (14:45):
The spice versions of themselves.
Speaker 2 (14:46):
Yes, mm hmm.
Speaker 1 (14:48):
Marco Polo observed a whole bunch of pepper when he
arrived at Java in twelve EIGHTYCE, and control of the
pepper trade routes fragmented during medieval times, with Muslim traders
maintaining control over the Middle leg, But once the spices
reached the Mediterranean, Italian city states like Venice took over
(15:08):
four hundred tons of pepper a year was going through
Venice by fifteenth century, which merchants marked up forty percent,
well speaking of forty percent, over forty percent of all
value that entered another Italian city state Genoa was due
to pepper by the fourteenth century CE. Because of the
distance involved shipping, pepper was very expensive. To this day,
(15:32):
pepper expensive is a phrase in Dutch.
Speaker 3 (15:36):
And in French che cobvoi. Pepper was mentioned in dowries,
ransoms and fines of the times. Wow, you could pay
for lots of stuff in pepper.
Speaker 1 (15:46):
Then get a ransom note and it says it's like,
give me some pepper, give me to leave ten bounds
of pepper or else.
Speaker 3 (15:51):
Yeah, you'll never see never see him again.
Speaker 2 (15:55):
Oh my goodness.
Speaker 1 (15:56):
Wow, so expensive was pepper of spices. At the time,
it was one of the things European explorers were hoping
to find when they set off in search of new worlds.
Speaker 2 (16:07):
Columbus good Gravy.
Speaker 1 (16:09):
There he is again brought back what he thought was
loads of pepper from West Indies, only to find on
his return he'd actually been transporting the unvalued chili peppers.
Speaker 2 (16:20):
Oh poor Columbus.
Speaker 1 (16:21):
Well well. Portuguese explorer of Vasco de Gama embarked on
a mission from his king to find quote Christians and spices.
He seemed to have succeeded, and Portugal overtook the rest
of the world to control the spice trade. By the
fifteen hundreds, they lost about a third of their trade
ships along the way, though, But hey, you gotta get
some of that sweet, sweet, our, savory savory pepper. Yeah,
(16:44):
and get some They did too, to the tune of
two million kilograms of pepper from India imported annually. But
Portugal solowly lost control of the trade to the Dutch
in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, particularly in the Big
spice calm. That didn't last too long, though, and the
British usurped control from the Dutch with the British East
(17:06):
India Company. It was around this time, though, that pepper
lost a bit of its economic punch with the discovery
of chili peppers.
Speaker 3 (17:14):
Which apparently did not go unvalued forever and ever.
Speaker 1 (17:17):
Yes, yeah, times change, but pepper didn't stay down for long.
It made a comeback with the help of King Louis,
the fourteenth Royal chefs. The king was a bit persnickety
when it came to food, and he preferred very little seasoning,
ah very little, to the point that he forbade the
use of spices outside of salt, pepper and parsley.
Speaker 2 (17:39):
That's it.
Speaker 3 (17:39):
Huh.
Speaker 1 (17:40):
Once again, this royal food preference spread from the aristocracy
and from there to anyone could afford it, people trying
to emulate royalty. And this helped lead salt and pepper
being to the two spices you're pretty much guaranteed to
find on tables in the West. Yeah, because one king
was very particular about his diet.
Speaker 3 (18:01):
It makes so much strange sense, I know, right. Yeah.
Starting in seventeen ninety seven, Salem, Massachusetts, became the seat
of a multimillion dollar pepper trade. That's when one captain
Jonathan Carnes found a route to the island of Sumatra
in present day Indonesia, thus bypassing the whole English, Dutch,
(18:21):
et cetera mess, and he successfully brought a cargo of pepper
back home at a seven hundred percent return on investment
worth some one point five million dollars or so in
today's money.
Speaker 2 (18:33):
Is quite the pepper trade. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (18:35):
He managed to make one more voyage before other Salem
shipmasters discovered his route, kickstarting decades of hugely profitable, if
hugely dangerous pepper business. There was apparently a whole lot
of like pirting and kidnapping and ransoming around and on Sumatra,
but the pepper trade through Salem was nonetheless really huge.
(18:56):
Their captains and traders formed the Salem East Indian Society
and exported their pepper through the United States but also
throughout Europe, and expanded their trade to other products, including
curiosities aka artifacts, riding the wave of popular Asian exoticism
that was happening in the eighteenth century or a nineteenth
(19:16):
century rather sorry, and these from all over Indonesia, India,
and China. The first live elephant in America stepped ashore
in Salem. Really all of this made Salem the wealthiest
city per capita in the United States by the early
eighteen hundreds. Salem City seal still bears the image of
a native Sumatran along with the Latin four to the
(19:39):
farthest port of the rich East. I did not know those,
I know right, and they would hold the trade until
the eighteen forties, when a whole number of factors like
a bunch of destruction to their ships from the War
of eighteen twelve and a trade competition from larger cities
harbors that had better rail routes leading inland like a
(19:59):
New York City and boss and would decrease the profitability
of their pepper trade, and as with many spices, this
widespread competition, along with a bunch of collaboration from the
farmers and suppliers in the places where pepper was grown
to increase their crops, would turn pepper from a luxury
to an everyday affordability in the mid eighteen hundreds.
Speaker 2 (20:21):
Yep, and now it's everywhere.
Speaker 3 (20:24):
Yep. You get it for free in little knife and
fork plastic packets. Yeah, just in case emergency pepper, emergency pepper.
Speaker 1 (20:35):
You never know. I really want to try that sneeze thing. Now,
that was another big question I had. That was really true.
Speaker 3 (20:41):
Yeah, it'll totally make you sneeze. And it has a
few other medical uses than just making you sneeze. Oh
it does. We will get to those after one last
quick break for a word from our sponsor.
Speaker 2 (21:05):
And we're back. Thank you, sponsor, Yes, thank you.
Speaker 1 (21:09):
Pepper has been used medicinally and I can hear your
surprise from here, No way I can, including, according to
the Encyclopedia Britannica, for flatulence relief and to simulate gastric secretions.
Speaker 3 (21:25):
Hmm, yeah, get you juices flow on.
Speaker 2 (21:27):
Sure. That's a very nice way of putting it. Mm hmm.
Speaker 1 (21:31):
Throughout history, various types of pepper have been used to
treat things like hernia's, heart disease, joint pain, I infections,
excess flynn, constipation and diarrhea.
Speaker 3 (21:40):
Also flu by grains, anxiety, depression, gastric worms, strapped throat coma, cholera, boils,
night blindness, epilepsy, tooth decay, hepatitis, and syphilis coma.
Speaker 2 (21:52):
They're trying to get you to sneeze out of the coma.
Speaker 3 (21:54):
I think so.
Speaker 2 (21:55):
Yeah, but these smelling salts yeah.
Speaker 1 (21:57):
Oh, and also we can't forget it was thought to
elevate virility.
Speaker 3 (22:02):
Everything's inn aphrodisiac.
Speaker 1 (22:04):
Oh, including spam. Somebody scentis a link? Well what, yes,
I can't believe we didn't discover this in our episode.
Speaker 2 (22:10):
I I just moved.
Speaker 3 (22:12):
I just moved bodily back away from the microphone in shock. Okay,
that's a great listener mail that I look forward to
reading backed pepper modernly uh piperine, which is that that
key ingredient in pepper has been investigated for some of
those potential medical uses that have been floating around in
(22:34):
traditional medicine for literal ages and in various human studies.
Piperine has indeed been found to have anti inflammatory, anti carcinogenic,
anti asmatic, antioxidant, and even anti diabetic effects, among others.
But unfortunately, piperine is only slightly soluble in water, so
(22:54):
it's not readily bioavailable to our cells. It's hard for
our bodies to use, and research is ongoing about its
possible medicinal uses and better ways for our bodies to
get at it, which involve like nanoparticle encapsulation in matrices
of lipids, which is pretty great.
Speaker 2 (23:12):
That is excellent.
Speaker 3 (23:14):
It's also been shown to inhibit the growth pepper in general.
Pepper has also been shown to inhibit the growth of
some twenty five percent of the microbes that lead to
food spoilage, which make it indeed a worthy culinary ingredient,
especially during humanity's long history pre refrigeration. Yeah for meats
(23:34):
and stuff like that. And pepper is also currently being
investigated for some of its terpenes, which are these flavor
compounds that bind with receptors in the brain that may
interact with other drugs like cannabis to help lessen unwanted effects,
such as in the example of cannabis anxiety.
Speaker 2 (23:55):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (23:56):
I saw that a note in the outline before you
filled it out, and I was very intrigued.
Speaker 2 (24:01):
I think it just said weed anxiety.
Speaker 3 (24:05):
It was one of the things that popped up when
I was researching.
Speaker 1 (24:08):
I was like, all right, Wow, who knew pepper?
Speaker 3 (24:12):
People are on the case.
Speaker 2 (24:13):
People are on the case. That's also a little bit.
Speaker 3 (24:17):
Of an episode preview. We've had it in another few weeks,
not extremely soon, in another month or so. We're plotting
an episode about about edibles.
Speaker 2 (24:28):
Yes, of the weed variety.
Speaker 3 (24:31):
Indeed.
Speaker 1 (24:34):
So that's that's Pepper and a little A side note
is my neighbor's next door they were named their dog
was named Pepper.
Speaker 3 (24:44):
Huh.
Speaker 1 (24:44):
Yeah, And I totally forgot about it in this whole episode.
I keep thinking about every time we see.
Speaker 3 (24:50):
You think about the dog.
Speaker 1 (24:51):
Oh, he was a Sweetheartady got hit by a car.
Speaker 3 (24:53):
But this is a roller.
Speaker 2 (25:01):
That was the end.
Speaker 3 (25:03):
Oh that's nice.
Speaker 1 (25:04):
And I'm I'm discovering because I have another friend I
mentioned in Garlic their dog is named Garlic.
Speaker 2 (25:10):
Yeah, so maybe spices are good pet names?
Speaker 3 (25:13):
Good pet names? Uh, definitely send us pictures of your
pets if they're named after food items. Yes, I mean
send us pictures of your pets anyway, Like I just
want to look at pets all day.
Speaker 1 (25:27):
And that brings us to the end of this classic episode.
We hope that you enjoyed it as much as we
enjoyed doing it. And yeah, let us all wish Lauren
happy knew how home. I can't wait to see it.
I'm going to make her watch the Star Wars Holiday
special Don't Tell.
Speaker 2 (25:46):
Her and Speedy Recovery.
Speaker 1 (25:50):
And yes, as always, we would love to hear from
you listeners about this or anything else. And I'm going
to try to do this. I don't know if I've
ever done it myself, but here we go. You can
email us at Hello at savorpod dot com. You can
also find us on social media on Facebook, Twitter, and
Instagram at saver pod. We would love to hear from you,
(26:13):
savor As a protection of iHeartRadio. For a podcasts on iHeartRadio,
you can check out the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or
regular listen to your favorite shows. Thanks as always to
our super producers Andrew Howard and Dylan Fagan. Thanks to
you for listening, and we hope that lots more good
things are coming your way.
Savor News
Hosts And Creators
Anney Reese
Lauren Vogelbaum
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