the.com/pepper
Once worth more than gold, now ignored beside the salt it bullied into fame
means A pungent spice made from the dried berries of the Piper nigrum vine, used to season food, or by extension the act of scattering something thickly (as in 'peppered with questions').
from From Old English 'pipor', borrowed from Latin 'piper', which itself came from Greek 'peperi' — and that Greek word traces back to Sanskrit 'pippali', the name for the long pepper of India. The spice traveled west along ancient trade routes long before the word settled into English, so the name is essentially a souvenir carried home from India through the Mediterranean. The hot vegetable 'pepper' (chili and bell) is a later, unrelated misnaming: when Spanish explorers met capsicum in the Americas, they called it 'pimiento' after the spice they already prized, and the borrowed name stuck.
- medieval money
- Rents and ransoms were paid in peppercorns
- the heat trick
- Piperine fools your tongue into feeling fake fire
- trade empire
- Pepper hunts launched Europe's age of exploration
- sneeze cause
- Piperine irritates nerves, triggering the reflex
scoville scale — measures heat of peppers from bell pepper (0) to carolina reaper (2.2 million units)
carolina reaper — world's hottest pepper since 2013, grown in south carolina, 2.2 million scoville units
hungarian paprika — protected designation of origin spice from hungary, made from capsicum peppers since 16th century
thai bird's eye — small hot chili pepper widely used in southeast asian cuisine, 50,000-100,000 scoville units