Welcome to the summary page for FabulousFusionFood's Spice guide to Black Pepper along with all the Black Pepper containing recipes presented on this site, with 4447 recipes in total.

This is a continuation of an entire series of pages that will, I hope, allow my visitors to better navigate this site. As well as displaying recipes by name, country and region of origin I am now planning a whole series of pages where recipes can be located by meal type and main ingredient. This page gives a listing of all the Cornish recipes added to this site.

These recipes, all contain as a major flavouring.

Black pepper represents the dried fruit of the flowering vine, Piper nigrum a member of the Piperaceae (pepper) family. The pepper vine is a native of south-western India (Malabar) and has been traded from there since prehistory. In early Europe pepper was so valuable that it was often used as collateral or even currency. The exorbitant price of pepper during the late middle ages (due to the virtual monopoly Venice had on the trade) was one of the reasons for the early Portuguese voyages of discovery. Even today pepper is the world's most widely-traded spice and in Europe at least you will find pepper side-by-side with salt on every dinner table.

The pepper plant is a perennial woody vine growing to four metres in height on supporting trees, poles, or trellises. It is a spreading vine, rooting readily where trailing stems touch the ground. The leaves are alternate, entire, five to ten centimetres long and three to six centimetres broad. The flowers are small, produced on pendulous spikes four to eight centimetres long at the leaf nodes, the spikes lengthening to seven to 15 centimetres as the fruit matures. A single stem will bear 20 to 30 fruiting spikes. The harvest begins as soon as one or two berries at the base of the spikes begin to turn red, and before the fruit is mature, but when full grown and still hard; if allowed to ripen, the berries lose pungency, and ultimately fall off and are lost. The spikes are collected and spread out to dry in the sun, then the peppercorns are stripped off the spikes. This produces black pepper (image, top), the dried still-unripe green fruit of the pepper vine. The berries are cooked briefly in hot water, both to clean them and to prepare them for drying. The heat ruptures cell walls in the fruit, speeding the work of browning enzymes during drying.

White pepper (image, bottom) in contrast is made from only the seed of the pepper fruit. The outer fruit wall is removed by allowing fully ripe berries to soak in water for about a week, during which time the flesh of the fruit softens and decomposes. Rubbing then removes what remains of the fruit, and the naked seed is dried. Green pepper (second image, left), like black, is made from the unripe berries. Dried green peppercorns are treated in a manner that retains the green colour, such as treatment with sulphur dioxide or freeze-drying. Pickled peppercorns, also green, are unripe berries preserved in brine or vinegar. Red peppercorns can also be made by preserving ripe red pepper berries in brine and vinegar (third image, left). (This 'true' red pepper should not be confused with the more familiar dried 'Red/Pink Peppercorns' which are not true peppercorns at all.

Pepper gains its spicy heat from the piperine compound which is present both in the seed and the outer fruit (which is why most people believe white pepper to be milder than black pepper). In reality piperine is about one hundredth the strength of capsaicin found in chilli peppers. Pepper loses flavour and aroma through evaporation, so airtight storage helps preserve pepper's original spiciness longer. Pepper can also lose flavour when exposed to light, which can transform piperine into nearly tasteless isochavicine. Once ground, pepper's aromatics can evaporate quickly; most culinary sources recommend grinding whole peppercorns immediately before use for this reason. The Romans where very fond of using pepper in all their dishes including desserts and in Europe pepper is so commonplace that it is used with salt to season most savoury dishes and is also used as a condiment at the table.

Pepper is the ultimate 'pungent' spice, in that it has pungency but no bitterness (unless it is cooked too long). Pepper also has an aromatic quality (it is a fruit after all). White pepper is the most pungent of the pepper forms (as it does not have the fruit coat) and green pepper is the least pungent. Red pepper is the most aromatic (being mature fruit), they are as pungent as black pepper but also have the sweet taste of mature fruit. Due to their being immature green peppercorns have a slightly herbaceous note and go well in sauces and dressings.

To retain flavour pepper should be added to a dish near the end of cooking. Indeed, if black pepper is cooked too long it can become bitter. In addition, prolonged heating will also transform piperine into nearly tasteless isochavicine, negating the effect of adding black pepper to food.

Interestingly, the name 'pepper' is actually derived from the Sanskrit name for long pepper pippali [पिप्पलि, पिप्पली]. This yielded the Greek word peperi [πέπερι] and the Latin piper (both these words then came to mean black pepper rather than long pepper). Black pepper has been known since antiquity (black peppercorns have been found in Egyptian mummies) and it was much in demand by Ancient Roman cooks. Black pepper is native to the Malabar region of the Western Coast of South India (modern Kerala). It seems that vines were transplanted to Malaysia and Indonesia by Indian merchants more than 2000 years ago and it has been cultivated there since that time. Today, India and Indonesia account for more than 50% of global production. India's main pepper product is black pepper, though the Malabar region has been producing white pepper since antiquity (green and red peppers are modern inventions).

These days, black pepper has become an almost ubiquitous condiment, especially since the price falls of the 20th century. This has also made pepper available in Asian markets, where it was not seen before. Interestingly, Asian cooks tend to prefer white pepper to black pepper (though fresh green peppercorns are also becoming popular). The unique blend of pungency and aromatic overtones found in black pepper means that this spice marries with both savoury and sweet dishes (the Ancient Romans were fond of desserts flavoured with pepper) and also goes well with fruit (strawberries and black pepper are a particular delight). Though black pepper has been eclipsed by chillies in terms of pungency, black pepper still remains an indispensable spice.

Peppercorns are pungent and aromatic. The pungency is strongest in white pepper and weakest in green pepper, while black and green peppercorns are more aromatic than the white ones. Green peppercorn have a somewhat immature, herbaceous fragrance. Red peppercorns combine a sugary–sweet taste with the mature pungency and flavour of black pepper. Black pepper contains about 3% essential oil, whose aroma is dominated (max. 80%) by mono­terpene hydro­carbons: sabinene, β-pinene, limonene, furthermore terpinene, α-pinene, myrcene, Δ3-carene and mono­terpene derivatives (borneol, carvone, carvacrol, 1,8-cineol, linalool). Sesqui­terpenes make up about 20% of the essential oil. Main compound is β-caryo­phyllene, while others like α-humulene, β-bisabolone and caryo­phyllene oxide and ketone appear only in traces; yet some work reports significant amounts of germ­acrene D, a ten-ring sesqui­terpene hydro­carbon. Phenyl­propanoids (eugenol, methyl eugenol, myristicin, safrole) are found in traces, too. The most important odorants organo­leptically in black pepper are linalool, α-phellandrene, limonene, myrcene and α-pinene; furthermore, branched-chain aldehydes were found (3-methyl­butanal, methyl­propanal). The musty flavour of old pepper is attributed to the formation of hetero­cyclic com­pounds (2-isopropyl-3-methoxy­pyrazine, 2,3-diethyl-5-methyl­pyrazine) in concentrations of about 1 ppb.

For example recipes using all the different colours of peppercorns (black, white, green and red), see below: