Pink peppercorns galore, plus sea salt, make for great seasoning. Peppermills available from WilliamBounds.com. WHAT IT IS: Varietal peppercorns—20 different pepper types and counting. WHY IT’S DIFFERENT: Each origin of the world produces pepper with different aromas and flavors—just like coffee beans and chocolate. WHY WE LOVE IT: Another way to vary food accents—and it has no calories! WHERE TO BUY IT: Pepper-Passion.com, Kalustyans.com. All of the Top Pick Of The Week newsletters are permanently archived on TheNibble.com, in chronological order and by product category.

Varietal Peppercorns: Spice Up Your Life   Page 2: What Is Pepper?   What Is Pepper Black pepper, botanically known as Piper nigrum, from the family Piperaceae, has been the world’s most popular spice for 3,000 years, treasured by ancient Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans—the pharaohs were buried with precious peppercorns in their noses. For much of its history, pepper was known as “Black Gold,” a term still used in India today. Native to the western hills of India, traders carried pepper to Java and other countries. It was so treasured that the search for its source and control of the trade influenced world exploration, and thus, history. Vasco da Gama circumnavigated Africa to reach the Malabar Coast of India, which enabled Portugal to gain a monopoly on pepper for almost a century. That made Lisbon the European trading center for spices, nearly ruining Alexandria, Genoa, and Venice. Pepper was of key importance to season and preserve meats, and to overcome the odors of rancid food. By the Middle Ages in Europe, pepper was so valuable that it was worth more than gold by weight, and individual peppercorns were widely accepted as legal currency for dowries, taxes, and rents. It was also good for one’s health. The original pepper merchants, along with spice merchants, were the predecessors of apothecaries: Pepper and pepper oil were components of most European medicines of the time. (Article continues below)

What Is Pepper (Continued)

Pepper comprises more than 25% of the world trade in spices, yet is grown in only a handful of countries within 15 degrees of the equator. The word pepper derives from the Sanskrit pippali, which referred to the long pepper, piper longum; the word for the round Piper nigrum is marica. However, the Greeks and Romans adapted pippali to refer to either pepper: In Latin, the word became piper, and in Old English, pipor.

The same fruit is used to produce black, white, and green peppercorns, but each is harvested and processed differently, as you’ll read in the Glossary of Varietal Peppercorns.

As with wine, coffee, chocolate, cheese, and many foodstuffs, country and region of origin are important to the quality of the product, both for the growing environment (“terroir”), which imparts different flavor qualities, and the craftsmanship of the producers. As connoisseurship of peppercorns grows, individuals will find their taste preferences, whether they be the floral Sarawak from Malaysia, the super-hot Talamanca del Caribe from Ecuador or something else entirely.

By the way, the use of the word “pepper” to mean “spirit” or “energy” dates at least as far back as the 1840s: In the early 20th century, it was shortened to “pep.”

The History Of Peppercorns

Black pepper is native to the Malabar Coast of India, a tropical region in the present-day state of Kerala (see the map below). Records of its cultivation and use in traditional Indian (Ayurvedic) medicine and cooking date back to at least 2000 B.C.E. 

It was one of the most important spices in ancient trade and played a huge role in shaping world history.

Peppercorns were famously found stuffed into the nostrils of the Egyptian Pharaoh Ramesses the Great, who died in 1213 B.C.E., indicating their extreme value.

In ancient times, pepper was incredibly valuable to add flavor to food, including overcoming off-tastes. The Romans were obsessed with it and used it extensively in their cuisine.

The spice made its way to the West via ancient trade routes. It was highly valued in the Roman Empire for both cooking and medicine, becoming a staple ingredient in the famous Roman cookbook, De re coquinaria by Apicius.

Pepper was so precious that it was used as currency, and when Alaric the Visigoth besieged Rome in 410 C.E., he demanded 3,000 pounds of pepper as part of the ransom. It has also been named “black gold” and “the king of spices.”

Pepper was often used as a form of currency to pay taxes, tributes, dowries, and even rent. 

For centuries after the fall of Rome, Arab merchants largely controlled the trade routes (including the Silk Road) that brought pepper from India to the Middle East. 

During the Middle Ages, Italian cities like Venice and Genoa gained massive wealth by controlling the distribution of pepper and other spices throughout Europe. Pepper remained extraordinarily expensive in Europe because it had to travel thousands of miles along difficult trade routes.

The desire to find direct sea routes to the pepper-producing regions of India was actually one of the major motivations for the Age of Exploration. Christopher Columbus was searching for a westward route to the spice lands when he stumbled upon the Americas.

And that’s how chiles got mis-named “peppers.” When Columbus’s crew tasted a hot chile pepper in the Caribbean, the heat was similar to what they knew from black pepper. So then and there, chiles were misnamed peppers. (Here’s more about chiles (the Aztec word), a.k.a. chili peppers.)

Vasco da Gama's successful voyage around Africa to India in 1498 was largely about accessing pepper and other spices directly. He discovered the sea route around the Cape of Good Hope to Calicut (Kozhikode) on the Malabar Coast. This opened a new era of global trade and eventually led to European colonization.

The Portuguese, and later the Dutch and British, fought over control of the spice trade for centuries. The wealth from pepper trading helped build empires and financed colonial expansion. As new trade routes became established and cultivation spread to other tropical regions, the supply of pepper increased, and its price gradually dropped.

Today, pepper is so common and inexpensive that it’s hard to imagine that it once sparked wars and major exploration.


The Malabar Coast of India (map © Encyclopedia Britannica).

Continue To Page 3: What’s Wrong With Supermarket Pepper

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