SC - Paprika-History of

[LrdRas at aol.com]

In a message dated 97-11-06 07:38:09 EST, Cariadoc writes:

<< The
 Whole Chile Pepper Book, Little, Brown Co., Boston 1990. ) that refers to
 Capsicums in Hungary in 1569 in a noblewoman's garden, called "turkish red
 pepper." I don't know if they were the particular variety used for paprika,
>>

The variety of pepper used to make paprika is a considered to be a sweet
pepper. 

According to  "Food in History", hot peppers became extremely populer  during
the 1500's. 

They were also used by the Germans and English in beer making to give it
body.

 However "sweet peppers" (of which paprika is one) were not introduced until
the 1700's and even then it was grown and used extensively by the peasants of
Provence as a "breakfast" food.

>From there it spread to other parts of Europe, speciffically Poland from whom
the Hungarians adopted it as their national spice as well as and the Polish
name for paprika (pierprzyca) making it the definitive spice in Goulash. 

Based on this information, IMO, the hot peppers (capsicums) became widely
used (e.g. "extremely popular" throughout the countries who spoke Romance
languages shortly after Columbus introduced them to Spain. The introduction
of sweet peppers in the 1700's would preclude it's use during any of the time
period covered by the SCA and the use of paprika as a spice in Hungarian
dishes most probably began at the earliest circa 1725 C.E. but more likely
between 1740 C.E. and 1750 C.E.before  gaining widespread popularity and
national recognition in the last half of the century.

al-Sayyid Ras
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