Philippines / Pepper

Piper nigrum, or what we are familiar with as black pepper, is a berry from a flowering tropical vine native to Southern Asia. A member of the Piperaceae family of plants, depending on when it’s harvested, one vine produces four kinds of peppercorn. Green peppercorns are unripe berries that are freeze-dried. White pepper is almost ripened, the berries are harvested and soaked in water which washes off the husk leaving the gray-white seed. Red peppercorns (not to be confused with pink peppercorns) are fresh, ripe berries. Black peppercorns are harvested when the spike of berries is midway ripe; these unripe berries are actually more flavorful than a fully ripe berry. The black peppercorns are blanched or left to ferment and then dried in the sun. The drying process turns the husk black.

Black pepper was used in Indian cooking dating back to at 2000 BC, long before its piquant berries became known to the Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans.

The global popularity of pepper followed the rise of the Roman Empire. It was the Romans who brought pepper from the East to the western shores of continental Europe to use as an exotic, if expensive, spice known by merchants as “black gold”.

Black pepper was also used to treat a variety of ailments, including hemorrhoids, diarrhea, and other digestive issues.

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