SC - Period Chili

[Nanna Rögnvaldardóttir]

"The Spanish and Portuguese soon introduced the chilli to the Old World, but
while the sensitive palates of Europeans remained wary of so hot a flavour,
it was a revalation to the peoples of Africa, Arabia and Asia. They took to
using it lavishly, and were imitated by the island-dwellers of the Indian
and Pacific Oceans, to such an extent that in the sixteenth century, when
the spice had spread like wildfire its fierce flavour suggests, no one was
quite sure if "Calcutta pepper", a chili which quickly became naturalized in
India and was immediately added to the catalogues of traders in Oriental
spices, actually came from the East or the West Indies. The Bavarian
naturalist Leonhard Fuchs (1501-1566) descripes this siliquastrum in his
Historia Stirpium as originating in Calcutta in all its four forms: small,
large, pointed and broad. The Germans and northern French used it in small
quantities to give body to their beer and help it keep. The English put it
into pickles."

- - from History of Food by Maguelonne Toussaint-Samat.

Nanna


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