King of spices

 

                              CHAUDHARY MOHD KASHIM, BSC final year

INSTITUTE OF FOOD TECHNOLOGY

Black pepper is a flowering vine in the family   piperaceae, cultivated for its fruit which is usually dried and used as a spice and seasoning. When dried the fruit is known as a peppercorn. When fresh and
fully mature, it is approximately 5 millimeters, (0.20in) in diameter, dark red and like all drupes contains a single seed. Peppercorns and the ground pepper derived from them may be described simply as pepper, or more precisely as black pepper, green pepper and white pepper. Black pepper is native to south India and is extensively cultivated there and elsewhere in tropical regions .Black pepper is the world's most traded spice. It is one of the most common spices added to cuisines around the world. Dried ground pepper has been used since antiquity for both its flavor and as a traditional medicine.

 VARITIES OF PEPPER
1- Black pepper
Black pepper is produced from the still green, unripe drupes of the pepper plant. The drupes are cooked briefly in hot water, both to clean them and to prepare them from drying; the drupes are dried in the sun or by machine for several days, during which the pepper around the seed shrinks and darkens into a thin, wrinkled black layer. Once dried, the spice is called black peppercorn.
2- White pepper- White pepper consists solely of the seed of the pepper plant, with the darker colored skin of the pepper fruit removed. This is usually accomplishedly a process known as retting, where fully ripe red pepper berries are soaked in water for about a week, during which the flesh of pepper softens and decomposes.
3- Green Pepper- Green pepper, like black, is made from the unripe drupes. Dried green peppercorns are treated in a way that retains a green color, such as treatment with sulphur dioxide, canning or freeze-drying. Pickled peppercorn also green, are unripe drupes preserved in brine or vinegar.
4-  Wild Pepper-Wild pepper grows in the western Ghats region of India .Into the 19th
century ,the forest contain expansive wild pepper vines, as recorded by
the Scottish physician FRANCIS BUCHANAN in his book ,A journey from
madras through the countries of Mysore, Canada and Malabar.

5- Orange pepper And Red pepper-Orange or red pepper usually consists of ripe red drupes preserved in brine or vinegar. Ripe red peppercorns can also be dried using the same color preserving techniques used to produce green pepper.
6- Pink pepper and other plant used as pepper-Pink pepper from piper nigrum is distinct from the more common dried ”pink peppercorns”, which are actually the fruit of a plant from a different family, the Peruvian pepper tree, schinus molle, or its relative the Brazilian pepper tree, Schinus terebinthifolius.
Regions of origin-Peppercorns are often categorized by their place of origin. Two types come from India's Malabar Coast. Sarawak pepper is native to the Malaysian portion of Borneo. White muntok pepper comes from Indonesia. Kampot pepper is native to kampot.