Black pepper

Black pepper
Black pepper is native to south India, and is extensively cultivated there and elsewhere in tropical
regions. Currently Vietnam is the world’s largest producer and exporter of pepper, producing 34% of
the world’s Piper nigrum crop as of 2008.Dried ground pepper has been used since antiquity for both
its flavour and as a traditional medicine. Black pepper is the world’s most traded spice. It is one
of the most common spices added to European cuisine and its descendants. The spiciness of black pepper
is due to the chemical piperine, not to be confused with the capsaicin that gives fleshy peppers theirs.
It is ubiquitous in the modern world as a seasoning, and is often paired with salt.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 for drying. The heat ruptures cell walls in the pepper,
speeding the work of browning enzymes during 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. On some estates, the berries are separated from
the stem by hand and then sun-dried without the boiling process.