{"id":25072,"date":"2014-04-10T07:53:56","date_gmt":"2014-04-10T11:53:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=25072"},"modified":"2020-07-26T15:48:44","modified_gmt":"2020-07-26T19:48:44","slug":"chiles-peppers-and-world-trade-before-globalization","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2014\/04\/10\/chiles-peppers-and-world-trade-before-globalization\/","title":{"rendered":"Chiles, peppers, and world trade before globalization"},"content":{"rendered":"

ESR linked to an interesting discussion of the spread of chile peppers and other exotic spices<\/a> from the Roman empire onwards:<\/p>\n

Can you imagine a world without salsa? Or Tabasco sauce, harissa, sriracha, paprika or chili powder?<\/p>\n

I asked myself that question after I found a 700-year-old recipe for one of my favorite foods, merguez<\/em> \u2014 North Africa\u2019s beloved lamb sausage that is positively crimson with chiles. The medieval version was softly seasoned with such warm spices as black pepper, coriander and cinnamon instead of the brash heat of capsicum chile peppers \u2014 the signature flavor of the dish today. <\/p>\n

The cuisines of China, Indonesia, India, Bhutan, Korea, Hungary and much of Africa and the Middle East would be radically different from what they are today if chiles hadn\u2019t returned across the ocean with Columbus. Barely 50 years after the discovery of the New World, chiles were warming much of the Old World. How did they spread so far, so fast? The answers may surprise you \u2014 they did me!<\/p>\n

I learned that Mamluk and Ottoman Muslims were nearly as responsible for the discovery of New World peppers as Columbus \u2014 but I\u2019m getting ahead of myself.<\/p>\n

The global pepper saga begins in the first millennium bce with the combustible career of another pepper \u2014 black pepper (Piper nigrum<\/em>) and its cousins, Indian long pepper and Javanese cubeb. Although Piper nigrum<\/em> was first grown on the Malabar Coast in India, the taste for it enflamed the ancient world: No matter what the cost \u2014 and it was very high \u2014 people were mad for pepper. The Romans, for example, first tasted it in Egypt, and the demand for it drove them to sail to India to buy it. In the first century, Pliny complained about the cost: \u201cThere is no year in which India does not drain the Roman Empire of fifty million sesterces.\u201d <\/p>\n

In one sense, the whole global system of trade \u2014 the sea and land routes throughout the known world that spread culture and cuisine through commerce \u2014 was engaged with the appetite for pepper, in its growth, distribution and consumption.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"Dried

Dried chiles shipped well worldwide. From top-left<\/strong>: New World Capsicum annuum<\/em> varieties include guajillo<\/em>, ancho<\/em> and New Mexico; a smaller Capsicum frutescens<\/em> variety called \u201cbirdseye\u201d chiles spread wild in Africa after birds spread their seeds from early gardens, and they are now common also in Southeast Asia; \u201cIndian\u201d chiles are among the most common varieties in India, which today grows and exports more chiles than any other nation. Bottom-left<\/strong>: Three popular capsicum peppers that took root in the Middle East \u2014 Mara\u015f, Urfa and Aleppo, shown below in their flaked form \u2014 are used in dishes throughout the region. Bottom-right<\/strong>: Fresh serrano, poblano and ripe jalape\u00f1o peppers.<\/p><\/div><\/p>\n

ESR said in his brief G+ posting<\/a>:<\/p>\n

More about the early and very rapid spread of capsicum peppers in the Old World than I’ve ever seen in one place before.<\/p>\n

I also didn’t know they were such a nutritional boon. It appears one reason they became so entrenched is they’re a good source of Vitamin C in peasant cuisines centered around a starch like rice. My thought is that moderns may tend to miss this point because we have so much better access to citrus fruits and other very high-quality C sources.<\/p>\n

The bit about paprika having been introduced to Hungary by the Ottomans was also particularly interesting to me. This was less than 30 years after they had reached the Old World.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ESR linked to an interesting discussion of the spread of chile peppers and other exotic spices from the Roman empire onwards: Can you imagine a world without salsa? Or Tabasco sauce, harissa, sriracha, paprika or chili powder? I asked myself that question after I found a 700-year-old recipe for one of my favorite foods, merguez […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[465,25,74,7,23],"tags":[1276,47,561,61],"class_list":["post-25072","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-americas","category-economics","category-food","category-history","category-india","tag-cooking","tag-islam","tag-rome","tag-ships"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-6wo","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25072","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25072"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25072\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":59131,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25072\/revisions\/59131"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25072"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25072"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25072"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}