2016 Herb of the Year: Capsicum (Peppers)
by Mark Fowler (Presented at the May, 2016, meeting)
Most cultivated peppers – mild bells to hot jalapeños – are the fruits from different varieties of one plant species, Capsicum annuum. Closely related are Capsicum frutescens, from which Tabasco sauce is made.
In all, there are some 27 species of Capsicum, about half of which have been used by humans. All Capsicum species are members of the nightshade family, as are tobacco, tomatoes, potatoes, and eggplant.
Chile peppers are completely unrelated to black pepper, the small dried fruits of a vine called Piper nigrum that is native to the Asian tropics. Using the term “pepper” for these pungent, fleshy fruits has been a source of confusion for over 500 years. They might more properly be called chilies, from the Aztec name for the pungent varieties, or capsicum, as the British refer to the mild forms.
Whatever you call them, all these “peppers” originated in the New World. Since ancient times, chilies have been essential elements of both food and medicine among indigenous peoples from the American Southwest to South America. Although they first evolved south of Amazonia, chili seeds have been found in cultural deposits more than 9000 years old in the Tehuacan Valley, Mexico.
Columbus brought seeds from the Caribbean islands to Western Europe, where for centuries peppers were grown primarily as ornamental plants. But people elsewhere were quickly captivated by Capsicum. In nearly all other parts of the world, as soon as chilies became known they were immediately adopted to enhance, and even transform, local cuisines. Indian curry, Thai peanut sauce, Chinese hot and sour soup, Hungarian goulash, Italian pepperoni, Cajun jambalaya – all impossible without chilies.
Indigenous Uses
Conquistadors reported that the Aztecs and Mayas ate chilies with nearly everything. Nutritious atole – corn gruel – with chili was thought to cure colds, strengthen the body, and relieve depression. Fasting for religious or health reasons entailed abstaining from chili and salt. Chile smoke was used as a fumigant, and misbehaving children were punished with it. Among the Tarahumara, chilies were used to prevent witchcraft and illness. A person who did not eat chili was immediately suspected of being a sorcerer.
In prehispanic times, chilies were not cultivated north of Mexico, but many native peoples from southern Arizona to the Big Bend of Texas used the tiny, fiery wild chilies, or chiltepin. Chilies came late to the Chumash in our region, brought by settlers from Mexico and presumably incorporated into the changing Chumash diet in mission times. They were also used medicinally. One seriously ill patient was given a concentrated extract of boiled chilies to drink, which induced profuse sweating. Then he had to drink a bucketful of seawater, a powerful purgative, after which he felt much better and recovered nicely.
How & Why Chiles Went Around the World
Wild chilies like the chiltepin (or chile piquin) are dispersed by birds. Humans helped to spread these plants from their South American homes into Central America, Mexico, and the Caribbean. Chili peppers joined corn, beans, and squash to form the “Big Four” staple crops in Mesoamerica. Native Americans and, later, people around the world, developed a great number of varieties from the original three principal species. Now many cultivated peppers, including bells and jalapeños, require human involvement for propagation.
Columbus actually undertook his voyage with the goal of finding a shortcut to the “Spice Islands” of Indonesia, source of spices like nutmeg, mace, and cloves that had been prized throughout Europe for centuries. They helped to mask “off” flavors of food in a time before refrigeration and were also a status symbol: highly spiced foods were a prerogative of the very rich because exotic spices were so expensive and hard to obtain. It was the Portuguese who introduced chilies through their trading activities to Africa, India, and much of Asia.
Putting out the Fire
Chiles are well named -- Capsicum comes from the Greek word κάπτω (kapto), “to bite.” The pungent heat is concentrated in the inner membranes, or placenta, not--as is widely thought and taught by most chefs and TV personalities--in the seeds or flesh. The heat comes from a group of alkaloid chemicals called capsaicinoids, principally capsaicin (C18H27NO3) and dihydrocapsaicin. Some chilies are so hot they can actually blister the skin, so it’s important to wear gloves when handling them, and be VERY careful to keep the juice out of your eyes and other sensitive areas of the body!
These oily compounds are very soluble in fat and alcohol, but hardly at all in water. So to put the fire out, it may work better to take a swig of beer than a gulp of water—but milk or yogurt are far superior heat quenchers. That’s because certain protein compounds in milk literally work like detergent to strip the capsaicin from its receptor binding sites.
How hot is HOT?
Chiles evolved their hot taste as protection from mammalian predators whose digestive tract would destroy the seeds. Their flavor is affected by the genetic ancestry of each plant and by the environmental conditions under which it is grown. The most precise way of measuring a chili’s “heat,” or pungency, uses High Performance Liquid Chromatography. A less formal test involves diluting a sample until the heat can no longer be tasted. The results are popularly expressed as Scoville Heat Units. This comparative list is for fresh chilies – dried ones can be much hotter.
Bell Pepper 0
Anaheim 500-1000
Pasilla 1000-1500
Jalapeño 2500-5000
Serrano 5000-15,000
Yellow Wax 5000-15,000
Cayenne 30,000-50,000
Chile Pequin 30,000-50,000
Chipotle (dried) 50,000-100,000
Habanero 100,000-300,000
Medical Applications
Red peppers provide many therapeutic benefits when eaten. They are rich in vitamins A and C, contain carotene, an antioxidant, and have been shown to reduce levels of cholesterol and triglycerides in the blood. Cultures where people eat large amounts of cayenne have much lower rates of cardiovascular disease.
Capsaicin, the compound that makes red pepper “hot,” is the pharmacologically active component. It helps people’s bodies adapt to hot climates by stimulating the cooling center of the hypothalamus to lower body temperature. The sweating they induce also provides evaporative cooling. Chiles stimulate the flow of saliva and gastric juices that aid in digestion.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved capsaicin for relieving pain of shingles (Herpes zoster). Clinical studies have also found it an effective pain reliever for diabetic nerve degeneration, cluster headaches, mastectomy, chemotherapy or radiation, and arthritis. Capsaicin ointments are available over the counter for relief of sore muscles and arthritis pain.
Most cultivated peppers – mild bells to hot jalapeños – are the fruits from different varieties of one plant species, Capsicum annuum. Closely related are Capsicum frutescens, from which Tabasco sauce is made.
In all, there are some 27 species of Capsicum, about half of which have been used by humans. All Capsicum species are members of the nightshade family, as are tobacco, tomatoes, potatoes, and eggplant.
Chile peppers are completely unrelated to black pepper, the small dried fruits of a vine called Piper nigrum that is native to the Asian tropics. Using the term “pepper” for these pungent, fleshy fruits has been a source of confusion for over 500 years. They might more properly be called chilies, from the Aztec name for the pungent varieties, or capsicum, as the British refer to the mild forms.
Whatever you call them, all these “peppers” originated in the New World. Since ancient times, chilies have been essential elements of both food and medicine among indigenous peoples from the American Southwest to South America. Although they first evolved south of Amazonia, chili seeds have been found in cultural deposits more than 9000 years old in the Tehuacan Valley, Mexico.
Columbus brought seeds from the Caribbean islands to Western Europe, where for centuries peppers were grown primarily as ornamental plants. But people elsewhere were quickly captivated by Capsicum. In nearly all other parts of the world, as soon as chilies became known they were immediately adopted to enhance, and even transform, local cuisines. Indian curry, Thai peanut sauce, Chinese hot and sour soup, Hungarian goulash, Italian pepperoni, Cajun jambalaya – all impossible without chilies.
Indigenous Uses
Conquistadors reported that the Aztecs and Mayas ate chilies with nearly everything. Nutritious atole – corn gruel – with chili was thought to cure colds, strengthen the body, and relieve depression. Fasting for religious or health reasons entailed abstaining from chili and salt. Chile smoke was used as a fumigant, and misbehaving children were punished with it. Among the Tarahumara, chilies were used to prevent witchcraft and illness. A person who did not eat chili was immediately suspected of being a sorcerer.
In prehispanic times, chilies were not cultivated north of Mexico, but many native peoples from southern Arizona to the Big Bend of Texas used the tiny, fiery wild chilies, or chiltepin. Chilies came late to the Chumash in our region, brought by settlers from Mexico and presumably incorporated into the changing Chumash diet in mission times. They were also used medicinally. One seriously ill patient was given a concentrated extract of boiled chilies to drink, which induced profuse sweating. Then he had to drink a bucketful of seawater, a powerful purgative, after which he felt much better and recovered nicely.
How & Why Chiles Went Around the World
Wild chilies like the chiltepin (or chile piquin) are dispersed by birds. Humans helped to spread these plants from their South American homes into Central America, Mexico, and the Caribbean. Chili peppers joined corn, beans, and squash to form the “Big Four” staple crops in Mesoamerica. Native Americans and, later, people around the world, developed a great number of varieties from the original three principal species. Now many cultivated peppers, including bells and jalapeños, require human involvement for propagation.
Columbus actually undertook his voyage with the goal of finding a shortcut to the “Spice Islands” of Indonesia, source of spices like nutmeg, mace, and cloves that had been prized throughout Europe for centuries. They helped to mask “off” flavors of food in a time before refrigeration and were also a status symbol: highly spiced foods were a prerogative of the very rich because exotic spices were so expensive and hard to obtain. It was the Portuguese who introduced chilies through their trading activities to Africa, India, and much of Asia.
Putting out the Fire
Chiles are well named -- Capsicum comes from the Greek word κάπτω (kapto), “to bite.” The pungent heat is concentrated in the inner membranes, or placenta, not--as is widely thought and taught by most chefs and TV personalities--in the seeds or flesh. The heat comes from a group of alkaloid chemicals called capsaicinoids, principally capsaicin (C18H27NO3) and dihydrocapsaicin. Some chilies are so hot they can actually blister the skin, so it’s important to wear gloves when handling them, and be VERY careful to keep the juice out of your eyes and other sensitive areas of the body!
These oily compounds are very soluble in fat and alcohol, but hardly at all in water. So to put the fire out, it may work better to take a swig of beer than a gulp of water—but milk or yogurt are far superior heat quenchers. That’s because certain protein compounds in milk literally work like detergent to strip the capsaicin from its receptor binding sites.
How hot is HOT?
Chiles evolved their hot taste as protection from mammalian predators whose digestive tract would destroy the seeds. Their flavor is affected by the genetic ancestry of each plant and by the environmental conditions under which it is grown. The most precise way of measuring a chili’s “heat,” or pungency, uses High Performance Liquid Chromatography. A less formal test involves diluting a sample until the heat can no longer be tasted. The results are popularly expressed as Scoville Heat Units. This comparative list is for fresh chilies – dried ones can be much hotter.
Bell Pepper 0
Anaheim 500-1000
Pasilla 1000-1500
Jalapeño 2500-5000
Serrano 5000-15,000
Yellow Wax 5000-15,000
Cayenne 30,000-50,000
Chile Pequin 30,000-50,000
Chipotle (dried) 50,000-100,000
Habanero 100,000-300,000
Medical Applications
Red peppers provide many therapeutic benefits when eaten. They are rich in vitamins A and C, contain carotene, an antioxidant, and have been shown to reduce levels of cholesterol and triglycerides in the blood. Cultures where people eat large amounts of cayenne have much lower rates of cardiovascular disease.
Capsaicin, the compound that makes red pepper “hot,” is the pharmacologically active component. It helps people’s bodies adapt to hot climates by stimulating the cooling center of the hypothalamus to lower body temperature. The sweating they induce also provides evaporative cooling. Chiles stimulate the flow of saliva and gastric juices that aid in digestion.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved capsaicin for relieving pain of shingles (Herpes zoster). Clinical studies have also found it an effective pain reliever for diabetic nerve degeneration, cluster headaches, mastectomy, chemotherapy or radiation, and arthritis. Capsaicin ointments are available over the counter for relief of sore muscles and arthritis pain.