Nov 15, 2009
CHILI PEPPERS. Chili peppers (genus Capsicum) can be eaten fresh or dried, raw or cooked, alone or mixed with other foods. They add zest to any food—meat, poultry, seafood, starch, vegetable, fruit—whether eaten by themselves or as an ingredient in a prepared dish. Peppers are the most popular spice and condiment in the world. They are consumed daily by one-quarter of the world's population, and the rate of consumption is growing. Nonpungent or sweet peppers are also consumed as a vegetable, but are the less popular spice. All capsicums were pungent before being domesticated by prehistoric New World peoples and before the breeding of non-pungent (sweet) types. Peppers, both pungent and non-pungent, are the fruit of perennial shrubs that were unknown outside the tropical and subtropical regions of the Western Hemisphere before 1493, when Christopher Columbus returned from the first of his voyages in search of a western route to the East Indies. Although he did not reach those exotic spice lands as he had proposed, his return to Spain with examples of a new pungent spice discovered during his first voyage to the eastern coast of the Caribbean island of Española (Dominican Republic and Republic of Haiti) is well documented in his journal. Today capsicums are not only consumed as a spice, condiment, and vegetable; they also have many other uses—as coloring agents, in landscape design, as ornamental objects, in decorative design—and have great potential in the field of medicine.
Nutritionally, capsicums are a superior food. They are an excellent source of the B vitamins, are superior to citrus as a source of vitamin C when eaten raw, and they contain more vitamin A than any other food plant by weight. Vitamin A increases as the fruit matures and dries but is not affected by exposure to oxygen, while the production of vitamin C in peppers diminishes with maturity and drying and is, as in all plant foods, destroyed by exposure to oxygen. Capsicums also contain significant amounts of magnesium, iron, thiamine, riboflavin, and niacin. Even though chili peppers are not usually eaten in large quantities, small amounts are important where traditional diets provide only marginal amounts of vitamins. However, ripe nonpungent varieties, such as bell peppers, can be eaten as painlessly as an apple while providing more food value.
A unique group of mouth-warming, amide-type alkaloids containing a small vanilloid structural component known as capsaicin act directly on the pain receptors of the mouth and throat to produce the burning sensation associated with peppers. This vanilloid element is also present in pungent spices such as ginger and black pepper. Birds and a few other creatures such as snails or frogs do not have neuroreceptors for pungent vanilloid compounds and thus capsaicin does not cause them pain.
V. S. Govindarajan (1985) has suggested "pungency" as the proper term for the perception of the hot or burning sensation humans have in response to such foods rather than to others. Consequently, the response to chili peppers should be defined as pungent rather than hot, stinging, irritating, sharp, caustic, acrid, biting, burning, and spicy. He also suggests that pungency be given the status of a gustatory characteristic of food, as are sweet, sour, bitter, saline, astringent, or alkaline.
The vanillyl amide compounds or capsaicinoids in Capsicum are predominantly capsaicin (C 69 percent), dihydrodcapsaicin (DHC 22 percent), nordihydrocapsaicin (NDHC 7 percent), homocapsaicin (HC 1 percent), and homodihydrocapsaicin (HDHC 1 percent). Several more analogues of these in trace amounts bring the number to ten (Masada et al., 1971; Treace and Evans, 1983). The primary heat contributors are C and DHC, but the delayed action of HDHC is the most irritating and difficult to quell. These compounds form a pungent group, of which capsaicin is the most important. Two of these five capsaicinoids cause the sensation of "rapid bite" at the back of the palate and the throat, while the others cause a long, low-intensity bite on the tongue and midpalate.
Most of the organs secreting these pungent alkaloids are localized in the fruit's placenta, to which the seeds are attached, along with the dissepiment (veins or crosswalls). The seeds contain only a low concentration of capsaicin resulting from this contact. The amount of capsaicin in a pepper is influenced by the growing conditions of the plant and the age of the fruit and is possibly variety-specific. The amount of capsaicin will increase under dry, stressful conditions. About the eleventh day after the fruit sets, the capsaicin content begins to increase, becoming detectable when the fruit is about four weeks old and peaking just before maturity, then dropping somewhat as it ripens (Govindarajan, 1985). Sun-drying generally reduces the capsaicin content, but when the fruits are air-dried with minimum exposure to sunlight, the highest retention occurs.
Capsaicin has virtually no odor or flavor, making it hard to detect by chemical tests, but a drop of a solution containing one part in 100,000 causes a persistent burning on the tongue. Although capsaicin is eight times more pungent than the piperine in black pepper, it only obstructs the perception of sour and bitter; it does not impair the discernment of other gustatory characteristics of food, as does black pepper. Eating capsaicin also causes gustatory sweating. The neck, face, and front of the chest sweat as a reflexive response to the burning in the mouth. Capsaicin activates the digestive systems by acting as an irritant to the oral and gastrointestinal membranes. That is a desirable irritation because it increases the flow of saliva and gastric acids. Very little capsaicin is absorbed as it passes through the digestive tract, an uncomfortable consequence of which is "jaloproctitis," or burning defecation.
Ingesting capsaicin by eating chilies not only increases the flow of saliva and gastric secretions but also stimulates the appetite. These functions work together to aid the digestion of food. The increased saliva helps ease the passage of food through the mouth to the stomach where it is mixed with the activated gastric juice. These functions play an important role in the lives of people whose daily diet is principally starch-based (Solanke, 1973).
Although capsaicin is not water-soluble, the addition of a small amount of chlorine or ammonia will ionize the capsaicin compound, changing it into a soluble salt. The same solution can be used to rinse capsaicin from the skin. When handling more than one or two chili pods, one should wear rubber or plastic gloves and/or keep a bowl of water with chlorine handy so that hands and skin can be rinsed immediately. Capsaicin can be quite painful if it comes into contact with the eyes, nose, or any other orifice. Capsaicin is soluble in alcohol, as are many organic compounds. Oral burning can be relieved by lipoproteins such as the casein found in milk and yogurt. The capsaicin is removed by casein in a manner similar to the action of a detergent, thereby breaking the bond it had formed with the pain receptors in the mouth (Henken, 1991). It is the casein, not the fat found in milk products, which relieves the burning; therefore, butter and cheese do not have the same effect as milk and yogurt.
Studies of the relationship of capsaicin to substance P, a neuropeptide that sends the message of pain to the brain, suggest that capsaicin can deplete nerves of their supply of substance P, thereby preventing the transmission of these pain signals (Rozin, 1990). Thus, capsiacin is being used to treat the pain associated with shingles, rheumatoid arthritis, and phantom-limb pain. Importantly, capsaicin may prove to be a non-habit-forming alternative to the addictive drugs used to control pain. It does not act on other sensory receptors such as those for taste and smell, but is specific to pain receptors. Medical researchers are finding this specificity to be a valuable aid in their studies.The carotenoid pigments responsible for the color in capsicums make peppers commercially important worldwide as natural dyes in food and drug products. Red capsan-thin is the most important pigment. All capsicums will change color as they mature from green to other hues—red, brown, yellow, orange, purple, and ripe green.
The flavor compound of capsicums is located in the outer wall (pericarp): very little flavor is found in the placenta and crosswall, and essentially none in the seeds. Color and flavor go hand in hand because the flavoring principle appears to be associated with the carotenoid pigment: strong color and strong flavor are linked. Two Latin American species, Capsicum pubescens (rocoto) and C. chinense (habanero), are more aromatic and have a decidedly different flavor than those of the more commonly consumed C. annuum var. annuum.
Smell and taste are separate perceptions. Several aroma compounds produce the fragrance. The taste buds on the tongue can discern certain flavors at dilutions up to one part in two million, but odors can be detected at a dilution of one part in one billion. The more delicate flavors of foods are recognized as aromas in the nasal cavity adjacent to the mouth. Sensory cells with this function are much more discerning than the tongue.
It is difficult to determine where Capsicum originated because the genus is still not fully understood (Eshbaugh, 1980, 1993). If the genus is defined as limited to taxaproducing pungent capsaicin, the center of diversity occurs in an area from present-day Bolivia to southwestern Brazil. However, if it is redescribed to include other non-pungent taxa, a second center of diversity would center in Mesoamerica (Eshbaugh, 1993). It is certain, nevertheless, that the first ancestor of all domesticates originated in South America.
There are indications that the better-known Capsicum annuum originally was domesticated in Mesoamerica, and the next best well-known, C. chinense, originated in tropical northern Amazonia. The two less familiar species, Capsicum pubescens and C. baccatum, are more commonplace in the Andean and central regions of South America. The first two species were introduced to the Europeans after Columbus's voyages to the New World, while the other two species were not encountered until later, only recently becoming known outside their South American homeland.
The tropical perennial capsicum spread rapidly around the Old World tropics after 1492. Chili pepper has since become the dominant spice and condiment in the tropical and subtropical areas known as the "pepper belt," and in temperate regions sweet peppers are an important green vegetable and are grown as an annual. Concentrated breeding studies have produced Capsicum varieties that can be cultivated in environments quite different from their original tropical home and modern forms of transportation have made peppers of all fruit types available worldwide.
In his journal Columbus faithfully recorded his sighting of a new pungent, red-fruited plant that he called pepper, and he brought back specimens to Spain, marking the beginning of the history of capsicums for the people of the Old World (Anghiera, 1964; Morison, 1963). However, the pungent fruits were not originally discovered by Columbus. When nonagricultural Mongoloid peoples from northeastern Asia, who had begun migrating across the Bering Strait during the last Ice Age, reached the subtropical and tropical zones of their new homeland in the Western Hemisphere, they found capsicums widespread, having been carried by their natural dispersal agents, principally birds, from their nuclear area in southeastern Bolivia or southwestern Brazil to other regions (Pickersgill, 1984). Prehistoric plant remains and depictions of chilies on artifacts provide archaeological evidence of the use and probable cultivation of wild capsicums as early as 5000 B.C.E. It has also been shown that native Americans had domesticated (genetically altered) at least four species by the time of Columbus's discovery (Heiser, 1976; MacNeish, 1967). No other species have been domesticated since that time.
When Columbus arrived in the West Indies, he found at least two species of capsicums being cultivated by the Arawaks, agriculturists who had migrated north from their homeland in northeastern South America to the Caribbean Islands during a twelve-hundred-year period beginning about 1000 B.C.E. (Anghiera, 1964; Watts, 1987). Those migrants had traveled by way of present-day Trinidad and the lesser Antilles, bringing with them a tropical capsicum that had been domesticated in their homeland. They also brought the word "ají "—by which the plant was, and still is, known in the West Indies and throughout its native South American habitat (Heiser, 1969). Later a second species that had been domesticated in Mesoamerica probably came over different trade routes to the West Indies along with other Mesoamerican food plants—maize, beans, and squash (Sauer, 1966). However, chilli, the native Nahuatl name for the endemic Mesoamerican pepper plant, did not travel with it. It was that later arrival, a more climatically adaptable pepper than its earlier South American relative, which was introduced by Columbus to the Old World (Andrews 1993, 2000).
The new American plants from the tropical West Indies were not suited to the climate and day length of the Iberian Peninsula and other parts of Europe and the Mediterranean. Twenty-nine years later the conquest of Mexico, followed by that of Peru, revealed plants that were more climatically suitable to cultivation in temperate Europe and the Middle East. Within fifty years of the first arrival of capsicum peppers on the Iberian Peninsula and on islands such as Cape Verde, the Canaries, Madeira, and the Azores, American chili peppers were being grown on African coasts and in India, monsoon Asia, southwestern China, the Middle East, the Balkans, central Europe, and Italy. In 1542 Leonhart Fuchs, a German, was the first to describe and illustrate several types of peppers, which at the time were considered to be natives of India. It was not the Spaniards but the Portuguese who were responsible for the early diffusion of New World food plants to Africa, India, and the Far East, abetted by local shipping and traders following long-used trade routes. These mariners and merchants enabled the spread of the new American plants throughout the Old World with great rapidity (Boxer, 1969a).
The dispersal of capsicum is not as well documented as that of plants such as maize (corn), tobacco, sweet potatoes, manioc (cassava), beans, and tomatoes. However, it is highly probably that capsicums followed the same trade route as the "three sisters"—corn, beans, and squash. The four plants have been closely associated throughout history.
In 1494 the pope's Treaty of Tordesillas divided the world on a line extending around the globe at a point 370 leagues west of the Cape Verde Islands. The Spanish were granted everything discovered west of the line and the Portuguese everything to the east of it. This arrangement persisted until the Dutch, followed by other European nations, challenged this monopoly at the end of the sixteenth century. Although the Portuguese were not active in the Spanish Caribbean until after 1509, when they brought the first slaves from Africa, they had acquired American maize by some yet unexplained means—perhaps in Galicia, Madeira, or the Canaries—before 1500, and were growing it on the west coast of Africa from where it was introduced to the Cape Verde Islands in 1502 (Jefferys, 1975). From early Portuguese "factories" in Africa and/or the eastern Atlantic Islands, the American food plants went to the east coast of Africa and India on the annual voyages of the Nao da Goa and other trading ships traveling between Lisbon and Goa on the Malabar Coast of western India (Boxer, 1984). As evidence of their coming from that African area, they were called "ginnie" (Guinea) peppers.
The natives of Africa and India, who were long-accustomed to pungent seasonings such as the African melegueta pepper (Afromomum melegueta), a member of the ginger tribe, Indian black pepper (Piper nigrum), and ginger (Zingiber officinale), readily accepted the fiery new spice. The Old World tropics provided an acceptable climate for the New World spice. The plants produced by the abundant, easily stored seed were much easier to cultivate than native spices, making capsicums an inexpensive addition to the daily diet. Along the Malabar Coast of India, three varieties of capsicums were being grown and exported within fifty years of Columbus's discovery of the New World (Purseglove, 1963).
Once established in India, chili pepper became part of spice shipments from the Far East along the new Portuguese route around Africa to Europe, over the ancient trade routes to Europe via the Middle East, and also on existing routes to monsoon Asia (Lobelius, 1576). The Portuguese also brought chilies to Southeast Asia and Japan. Once established in these areas, birds carried pepper seed from island to island and to humanly inaccessible inland areas.
In southwestern China, American foods were known by the middle of that century, having been transported over the ancient caravan routes from the Ganges River across Burma and across western China into India and the Middle East (Ho, 1995). This is evidenced by the fact that today the cuisines of southwestern Szechuan and Hunan use more chili peppers than any other area in China.
After the Spanish conquest of the West Indies, Mexico, Mesoamerica, and Peru, trade with the new colonies was very limited (Braudel, 1976). Once Mexico was subjugated and opened for colonization, the Spaniards virtually deserted the West Indies for the North American continent, leaving the islands inhabited primarily by African slaves brought there by the Portuguese. By that time, the indigenous peoples of those islands were essentially extinct. For the first fifty years following the New World's discovery, the Spanish rulers were more interested in problems within the Habsburg Empire than in their new acquisitions and, as a consequence, Spanish trade with the New World came to a standstill (Watts, 1987). During this period Portuguese and other European opportunists entered the Caribbean and established trading footholds.
In 1492, after ousting the Moors from Spain following their seven-hundred-year occupation, the Spaniards established dominance over the western Mediterranean while the Ottoman Turks succeeded in seizing control of northern Africa, Egypt, Arabia, the Balkans, the Middle East, and the eastern Mediterranean Sea. At that time, for all practical purposes, the Mediterranean was two separate trading spheres divided by Italy, Malta, and Sicily with little or no trade or contact between the western Mediterranean and the Ottoman Empire (Braudel, 1976). This is an important consideration in the history of the diffusion of American peppers and other economic plants.
Venice was the center of the spice and oriental trade for central Europe, and Venetian merchants depended on the Ottoman Turks to supply them with goods from the Asia. The Muslim Arab and Gujurati traders received supplies from Portuguese ports on the west coast of India and Hormuz at the mouth of the Persian Gulf. Goods introduced to central Europe were taken to Antwerp and from there to the rest of Europe. Antwerp, the major European shipping port, also received goods from the Far East, and from the Portuguese sources via India, Africa, and Lisbon. From these trading routes chili peppers came to be known in Italy by 1535 (Fernández de Oviedo, 1535), Germany by 1542 (Fuchs, 1543), England before 1538 (Turner, 1965), the Balkans before 1569 (Halasz, 1963), and in Moravia by 1585 (L'escluse, 1611). It was only in the Balkans and Turkey that chili peppers were used to any extent until the Napoleonic blockade cut off the supply of spices to Western Europe. Without their usual supply of spices, Europeans turned to Balkan paprika (chili pepper) as a substitute.
Most Europeans had grown capsicums only as ornamentals and believed that peppers were native to India and the Far East until the mid-nineteenth century when botanist Alphonse de Candolle produced convincing linguistic evidence for the American origin of the genus Capsicum (Candolle, 1852).
It was only after capsicums had become established in Asia, the Middle East, and Europe that the Spaniards played any part in the movement of New World plants to places other than Spain, Italy, and perhaps Western Europe. The Pacific Ocean route of the Spanish Manila-Acapulco galleon was established in 1565 and operated for 250 years (Schurz, 1939). This ship was a major means for transferring plants as well as trade goods between Mexico and the Far East. At approximately the same time the Spanish colonies of Saint Augustine, Florida, and Santa Fe, New Mexico, were founded. Those first European settlements in the present-day United States initiated Caribbean and Mexican trade with Florida and the Southwest, respectively, forty years before other northern Europeans began colonizing the east coast of North America. The first peppers to enter an English colony were sent to Virgina in 1621 by the governor of the Bermuda Islands.
At the time of World War II, one-fourth of the world's population, primarily in the pantropical belt and Korea, ate capsicums daily. Since that time the consumption of peppers as a spice, condiment, and vegetable has grown annually and is no longer limited to the tropical and subtropical areas. Some of the more common food products made with chilies are curry powder, cayenne pepper, crushed red pepper, dried whole peppers, chili powder, paprika, pepper sauce, pickled and processed peppers, pimento, and salsa picante. In 1992 salsa picante, a bottled sauce of Mexican origin made with a base of chilies, onions, and tomatoes, overtook tomato catsup as the top selling condiment in the United States.
Throughout the world capsicums are used as a source of color/pigment not only for commercial products such as cheese, sausage, salad dressings, and meat products, but also for drugs and cosmetics. Dried red peppers are added to hen feed to ensure yellow egg yolks and in caged bird feed to enhance the natural color of plumage.
The use of capsicums goes beyond that of a comestible. The florist and landscape industries have found their ornamental qualities to be of considerable value. The multihued, variform fruits of the attractive podded plant have become popular decorative motifs, not only in the Southwest but throughout the country. They can be found on chinaware, glasses, fabrics, in flower arrangements, as Christmas tree lights and ornaments, on men's neckties, even as hummingbird feeders, to name but a few.
The medical profession has discovered that certain folk medical practices employing chilies, many of which are prehistoric in origin, have merit and are being used by modern physicians to treat arthritis, shingles, toothache, and other types of pain. Research in this area continues. Solanaceous plants, which include capsicums, potatoes, datura, belladona, tobacco, and tomatoes, have long been used in charms, rituals, magic, ceremonies, divination, therapeutical practices, and other customs. Pre-Columbian Indian medicine men used peppers mixed with other substances for such ailments as coughs, poor digestion, ear infection, sore throat, injuries to the tongue, and to expedite childbirth.
The shape of most chili pepper pods, and their pungency/heat and redness have led them to be associated with male sexuality. In some cultures, eating chili peppers is thought to arouse passions, while in others people abstain from eating them in particular places or under certain conditions. Ancients used them in warfare and as torture or punishment and, even today, they are used as a repellent to ward off human or animal aggressors.
The Solanaceae, which includes such plants as potatoes, tomatoes, eggplant, petunias, and tobacco, is the family of which the genus Capsicum is a member. Currently, the genus consists of at least twenty-five species, four of which have been domesticated, and two others are cultivated extensively. The flowers, not the fruits, are the definitive feature of the genus. Although many of these are consumed by humans, it is those six species belonging to three separate genetic lineages that are of concern to human nutrition:
See also Central America; Columbian Exchange; Folklore, Food in; Iberian Penisula; Herbs and Spices; Magic; Mexico; Mexico and Central America; South America; United States: Cajun Cooking.
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Jean Andrews
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