[Sca-cooks] Spanish Pepper?

[Robin Carroll-Mann]

On Tue, Sep 13, 2011 at 8:11 PM, Honour Horne-Jaruk <jarukcomp at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> Respected friends:
> At my annual "siege cooking" contest at Pennsic this year, one of the contestants included dishes spiced with "Spanish pepper" - a Capsicum pepper, not a Piper species- which she insisted went back to Roman times and was ironclad-documentable to our time period.
>

No, no, no, no, and no.  Also no.  And no way.

There are 16th century Spanish sources describing the chiles of the
New World, and how the natives use them as a spice, much like
Spaniards use [black] pepper.  And at least one source refers to
chiles as "pimienta de las Indias" (pepper of the Indies).  If there
was something similar already in use in Spain (and I have never seen
any mentioned in period Spanish cookbooks, agricultural and health
manuals, and other resources), then the explorers would surely compare
the New World capsicums to those.

I would bet that the "ironclad documentation" is either some highly
imaginative website or a misreading of some period source.

Brighid ni Chiarain