White and Black Varieties and Why--How the Plant Is Cultivated and
Where--History the Grocer Should Know to Judge Qualities
Pepper is a commodity to be found in every grocery store, but how many
grocers know that the pepper plant--Piper nigrum--which produces the
white and black pepper of commerce, is a climbing vine-like shrub,
found growing wild in the forests of Travanscore and Malabar coast
of India? It is extensively cultivated in southwest India, whence it
has been introduced into Java, Borneo, the Malay peninsula, Siam, the
Philippines and the West Indies.
Pepper in the time of Alexander the Great was considered an extremely
choice article and, like gold and precious stones, was for many
generations found only on royal tables. During the Middle Ages, it was
used as money in payment of tolls, etc., hence the custom of “pepper
corn” rentals, i. e., a nominal rental or perpetual lease; and its high
price is said to have been one of the causes which led the Portuguese
to seek a sea passage to India.
The pepper plant grows naturally to 20 ft. in height, but is cultivated
on trellises or poles, about 10 or 12 ft. high and is propagated by
cuttings or suckers. It has a soft stem, the leaves are 4 to 6 in.
long, tough, glossy, broadly ovate, with 5 to 7 nerves, and grow
opposite and alternate to a pendulous spike 5 to 8 in. long, having 20
to 50 white flowers that ripen into a one-seeded fruit with a fleshy
exterior. This fleshy berry, covering a soft stone, is about the
size of a pea and is at first green, but in ripening turns red, which
gradually darkens to a deep chocolate shade. The vine begins to bear
when 3 or 4 years old and continues bearing for the next 10 or 15
years. It is in perfection at its eighth year.
[Illustration]
There are two crops a year--July and December--which yield 5 to 6 lbs.
of dried pepper each for a single vine. When the berries are ripe the
stalk is pinched off by hand and placed in an oblong cane basket,
slung horizontally behind the plucker by a rope around his waist. The
rounded ends of the basket extend a little on either side, so that the
basket can be easily filled by either hand of the workman. The berries
are rubbed off the spikes by hand and placed on mats or on the bare
ground, to dry in the sun, when the weather is fair. In damp or cloudy
weather they are placed in shallow, open baskets before a gentle fire.
If the berries are left too long on the vines they lose part of their
aromatic, pungent hot taste, and if gathered too soon they become
broken and dusty in drying. After drying, when they become black and
shriveled up, they are cleaned and winnowed. Good black pepper is
firm and not too deeply wrinkled, does not easily crumble or break
in the hand, it is also heavy and readily sinks in water. The inner
seed should be hard, round and smooth and of a grayish-brown color.
The outside pericarp should be brownish-black. A yellow tinge betrays
over-ripeness and consequent loss of strength. A reprehensible practice
among some dealers to hide defective peppers is to artificially
blacken them and polish with oil. The usual method of judging quality
is by weight, the grades technically being known as heavy, or shot,
half-heavy and light peppers or corns. A one-litre measure may be
filled with the pepper and the contents weighed, or 100 corns of
average size counted and their weight ascertained. The variations of
peppers of different qualities, according to their habitat, are given
in the following table:
Weight
Variety-- per litre
Singapore 476 grams
Tellicherry 548 ”
Lampong 511 ”
Mangalore 574 ”
Malabar 570 ”
Acheen 407 ”
It is evident that the moisture present in the corns plays an important
part in the determination of the weight, and it will be necessary to
bring the peppers up to the stated water content by either drying them
or placing them in a moist atmosphere, or first weigh them dry and
weigh again. A slight variation, however, from the figures given, is
unavoidable.
Singapore Pepper--The principal part of this import is the product
of Sumatra, Borneo and Siam, collected at Singapore. A considerable
quantity, however, is the products of the Straits Settlements
themselves. It is of large size and of a fairly uniform quality, but as
pepper powder it is not much esteemed, owing to the manner of drying,
giving it a smoky flavor that buyers can distinguish Singapore pepper
from peppers grown elsewhere.
Tellicherry and Alleppey are much alike in appearance, both being light
brown in color. They too, like the Malabar peppers, are sun-dried.
Mangalore (India) pepper is heavy, large, of a deep black color, very
clean, and of uniform size. When powdered it is of a greenish-black
appearance.
The pepper shipped from Penang is called Irang pepper and is grown in
Sumatra. From the east end of the same island comes the Lampong pepper,
but this lacks uniformity, and is light in color. It is also sun-dried.
Long pepper is the fruit spike of Chivaci Roxburgh, a native of Malabar
and Chavica officinarum, a native of the India archipelago; they are
both climbing plants. The first pods, or catkins, about 1½ in. long,
grow nearly straight, and opposite the leaves. They are gathered before
they are ripe and dried in the sun, when they become brown or dark
green in color and rough to the touch. They lack the pungency of the
black variety. The long pepper plant dies at the end of 3 years, and
after the fruit is collected the vine dies down to the ground. The
fruit grows so close together on the spike that when ripe they become
one solid mass. There is also a variety of long pepper called elephant
pepper. Long peppers are mostly used for pickles. A medium, called
Pippua moola, is made from the roots and stems; it is very stimulating.
Cubeb peppers are the berries of the vine Cubeb officinalis, a product
of Java, Borneo and Sumatra, but mostly imported by way of Batavia
and Canton. They are of a gray color, about the size of black pepper,
somewhat longer, more wrinkled and with a short slender stalk. They
have a hot, camphor taste. Another kind is distinguished by a mace-like
odor and taste. Cubebs are now mostly used as a medicine.
Ashantee or West African pepper is the dried berry of a pepper plant
which grows in tropical Africa. It is smoother and smaller than
the black pepper and resembles the Cubeb very closely. In taste it
resembles the ordinary black pepper. At one time its importation was
forbidden by the king of Portugal, as it threatened to interfere with
the commerce of India.
Betel pepper is the berry of Chavica betel, a species of climbing vine
largely cultivated in the East Indies, Ceylon, Burma, Siam, etc. It
furnishes the leaves which are used along with arecanut and other
ingredients to compose the favorite stimulant chewing mixture of the
people of India.
White pepper is from the same plant as black pepper, with the
difference, that to make white pepper the pepper corns are not picked
until fully ripe; they are then soaked in water for 7 or 8 days, or
heaped up so that the pulp ferments, then they are rubbed by hand, or
on a coarse cloth, if the quantity be small, or trampled under foot
if the quantity be large; this operation deprives them of the pulpy
skin or husk, and the greenish-white seeds which remain are the white
peppers of commerce; then they are re-dried, either in the sun or by
artificial heat. White pepper is bleached whiter by a chemical process.
If the berries be left on the vines until over-ripe they lose their
pulpy husk by natural decay and thus become actually white pepper,
altho in reality they are the kernels of black pepper.
Singapore white are berries cultivated in the neighboring islands and
the husks are removed at Singapore by hand and friction before the
berries are fully dried. Penang white is really grown at Sumatra, but
imported into Penang in a dried state. There the berries are soaked in
lime and water for several weeks, until the pulp is soft, when it is
rubbed off by hand and washing; the berries are then re-dried.
Siam white are berries prepared in the same manner as Singapore white,
from berries grown in Siam.
The dried black peppers, as imported, are also decorticated or deprived
of their husks by machinery, the result being white pepper, which is
sometimes bleached.
The active properties of pepper are an acrid resin, a volatile oil,
and a crystallizable, colorless substance called pipertine, or peperic.
Why white pepper should be preferred before the black is one of the
anomalies of the trade. White pepper has really only about a quarter
the strength of black pepper, and is the least economical to use for
these reasons: (1) Because of being allowed to ripen it loses much
of its pungency. (2) Because it is deprived of the outer skin or
husk, which contains much of the constituents which go to make good
pepper. (3) Because it contains scarcely a trace of piperin, one of
the most active principles of pepper. Pepper rapidly deteriorates
under atmospheric influences, and large stocks should not be carried
unless provisions are made for storing it in air-tight receptacles,
for, unless this precaution is taken, the goods in a few months will
have lost their pungency, which is an essential characteristic of good
pepper.
Pepper is a stimulant, and used in moderate quantities is an aid to
digestion. In India an infusion of it is used to create an appetite
and as a cure for gout and palsy. It is also used in cases of
cholera-morbus. A liniment is made from the berries for rheumatism, and
the root is employed as a tonic stimulant and cordial.