What is black pepper?
A: Black pepper is a flowering vine in the family Piperaceae, cultivated for
its fruit, known as a peppercorn.
The peppercorn is usually dried and used as a what?
A: Spice and seasoning.
The fruit is a drupe (stonefruit) which is about 5 mm
(0.20 in) in diameter (fresh and fully mature), dark red, and contains a
stone which encloses a what?
A: A single pepper seed.
Peppercorns and the ground pepper derived from them may
be described simply as what?
A: Pepper, or more precisely as black pepper (cooked and dried unripe
fruit), green pepper (dried unripe fruit), or white pepper (ripe fruit
seeds).
Black pepper is native to where?
A: The Malabar Coast of India, and the Malabar pepper is extensively
cultivated there and in other tropical regions.
Ground, dried, and cooked peppercorns have been used
since antiquity, both for flavor and as a what?
A: A traditional medicine.
Black pepper is the world's most what?
A: Traded spice.
Its spiciness is due to what?
A: The chemical compound piperine, which is a different kind of spicy from
the capsaicin characteristic of chili peppers.
It is ubiquitous in the Western world as a seasoning
and is often paired with what?
A: Salt and available on dining tables in shakers or mills.
Processed peppercorns come in a variety of
colors, any
one of which may be used in what?
A: Food preparation, especially common peppercorn sauce.
Black pepper is produced from what?
A: The still-green, unripe drupe of the pepper plant.
The drupes are cooked briefly in hot water, both to
clean them and to prepare them for what?
A: Drying.
The heat ruptures cell walls in the pepper, speeding
the work of what?
A: Browning enzymes during drying.
The drupes dry in the sun or by machine for several
days, during which the pepper skin around the seed does what?
A: It shrinks and darkens into a thin, wrinkled black layer.
Once dry, the spice is called what?
A: Black peppercorn.
After the peppercorns are dried, how can pepper spirit and oil can be extracted from the berries?
A: By crushing them.
Pepper spirit is used in what?
A: Many medicinal and beauty products.
Pepper oil is also used as an ayurvedic massage oil and
in what?
A: Certain beauty and herbal treatments.
White pepper consists solely of the seed of the ripe fruit of the pepper plant, after removing the thin darker-colored skin (flesh) of the fruit.
Ground white pepper is commonly used in what?
A: Chinese, Thai, and Portuguese cuisines.