582 PEPPERS 



PEPPERS 



The black and white peppers in daily domestic use are 

 obtained from the brown wrinkled berries of an East Indian 

 perennial climbing plant the Piper nigrum, of the natural 

 order Piperacese. They are imported from the Malabar 

 coast, the islands of the Indian Archipelago, and the West 

 Indies. The pendulous spike, bearing twenty to thirty 

 berries, is gathered as it begins to redden, shortly before 

 ripening, and is dried in the sun. The berries rubbed off, 

 and ground without separating their outer covering, yield 

 black pepper. To prepare the milder white pepper, the 

 best and soundest ripe berries are steeped in water, and 

 stripped of their pungent outer covering before they are 

 ground. Long pepper, the produce of Chavica Roxburghi, 

 is brought from Singapore and Batavia, and consists of 

 small, closely-attached berries, arranged on cylindrical grey 

 spadices one or two inches long. 



The peppers when ground have a hot, pungent, spicy 

 taste, and owe their properties to 1*6 to 2- 2 per cent, of 

 a volatile oil isomeric with oil of turpentine (C 10 H 16 ), a 

 soft, pungent resin, and 2 to 3 per cent, of the colourless, 

 crystallisable, neutral piperine (C 17 H 19 N0 3 ), which is isomeric 

 with morphine, and when boiled with caustic potash yield 

 an active oily alkaloid, piperidine (C 5 H n N). 



Cubebs, or Cubeba, is the dried, partially ripened fruit 

 of the Piper Cubeba, cultivated in Java and other islands 

 of the Indian Archipelago. The berries are stalked, and 

 lighter coloured than those of common pepper, are globular, 

 rough, and wrinkled, with a strong odour, and pungent, 

 aromatic, bitter taste. They contain a volatile oil, a resin, 

 and the neutral crystalline cubebin, which is devoid of any 

 marked action. 



Piper angustifolium, a shrub found in moist regions 

 throughout Brazil and Peru, yields matico leaves, much 

 used in America as a styptic dressing, and also occasionally 

 administered for the arrest of internal haemorrhage. 



Pimenta, pimento, Jamaica pepper, or allspice, closely 

 resembles the true peppers ; is the dried, unripe berry of 

 Pimenta officinalis, an evergreen West Indian tree of the 



