Philobiblon

I’ve been enjoying a fascinating discussion on the Mediev-L email discussion list about pepper. Like the original questioner, when I thought about the spice I was thinking of the early modern period, and the early period of European colonialism, but I’ve now learnt that the Greeks employed it in their cuisine, as did particularly the later Romans, and our name for it came from them, and they drew it from Sanskrit.

But there are several different fruits known as pepper – long pepper and black pepper, while European medieval early modern* sources confused chillies and peppers (which suggests to me they didn’t know either very well – or in rather degraded forms.)

There was also the attractively named grains of paradise – a plant of the ginger family with a peppery taste (at least this seems to be the consensus view – some think it was cardamon).

* I got a bit early here, as the commenter below explains. What I find fascinating about that is how late the chilli gets to Asia, yet how essential it now seems to Asian cuisines.