Black, white, pink, green: it’s only the beginning of your peppercorn education. Photo by Kelly Cline. WHAT IT IS: Varietal peppercorns—20 different peppers and counting. WHY IT’S DIFFERENT: Each origin of the world produces pepper with different aromas and flavors—just like coffee beans and chocolate. WHY WE LOVE IT: Another way to vary food accents—and it has no calories! WHERE TO BUY IT: Pepper-Passion.com, Kalustyans.com.

Varietal Peppercorns: Spice Up Your Life CAPSULE REPORT: You may or may not have mastered artisan salts, but it’s time to dive into gourmet peppercorns, the next wave of culinary excitement. Even if you’ve been assiduous about buying whole peppercorns, you may never have had great pepper: Supermarket peppercorns are a commodity, as lackluster as supermarket honey. If you enjoy a grind of fresh black pepper on your salads, eggs, veggies and meats, this is going to be an eye-opening NIBBLE. If you’re a gourmet cook—or know one—ditto. Why bring another bottle of wine as a gift when you can bring a sampler that shows that “fine pepper” is as varied and complex as “fine wine?” Read the full review below to learn about more than 20 different types of pepper and when to use them. Chef Stefan sells elaborate gift samplers, Pepper-Passion sells 4-variety samplers (and gift boxes) and Kalustyan’s sells 4-ounce bags of most varieties. Get ready to spice up your life. Read reviews of more of our favorite seasonings. Review the Table of Contents of the February issue of THE NIBBLE online magazine, plus the back issues archive and our most popular articles. All of the Top Pick Of The Week newsletters are permanently archived on TheNibble.com, in chronological order and by product category.

More About Spices

Herbs & Spices: The Cook’s Reference, by Jill Norman (Editor). Flavor profiles of herbs and spices, with history, cooking techniques, recipes, herb blends and food pairings. Clear and colorful photos. Click here for more information or to purchase.	The Contemporary Encyclopedia of Herbs and Spices: Seasonings for the Global Kitchen, by Tony Hill. An enthusiastic reference of 350 spices and herbs, with 75 different recipes and 200 color photos. Click here for more information or to purchase.	The Spice and Herb Bible, by Ian Hemphill and Kate Hemphill. At 608 pages, this hefty book is a most comprehensive guide, with page after page of colorful photographs. Click here for more information or to purchase.

Varietal Peppercorns: Spice Up Your Life

Remember when salt was either iodized or kosher? Now, if you aren’t serving beautiful salts from the seven seas plus artisanal varieties smoked over chardonnay barrels, coconut shells and kaffir lime leaves, you’re as exciting as a host who pours tap water. It’s the same with pepper. As a college student, when we first started Mastering The Art of French Cooking with Julia Child et al, there were black peppercorns and white peppercorns. We were schooled never to use anything sold pre-ground: Piperine, the chemical compound that provides pepper’s pungent (hot and biting) qualities, and the volatile oils that deliver its aroma, begin to dissipate thirty minutes after grinding exposes them to air. Grinding by peppermill or mortar and pestle—or even hand-crushing, we learned—was the only way to go.

A few years later, at Kalustyan’s spice market in New York City, we learned the difference between Malabar and Tellicherry peppercorns, grown on the southwestern coast of India—on the same vine! Then, what we thought of as “gourmet” peppercorns appeared on the scene. Pink peppercorns* arrived from Reunion, a French island southwest of Mauritius in the in the South Indian Ocean (and a stop for yachts en route to South Africa). Green peppercorns—actually unripe black peppercorns—appeared from India. Milder and fruitier than black corns, each added a very different pepper flavor plus bright color to dishes.

*Not from Piper nigrum, the pepper vine, but the berry of the Baies Rose Plant.

It’s taken another 20 years for pepper to make the next leap, but jump it has. Now you can choose your peppercorns the way you choose your coffee beans, wine or chocolate: based on varietal and terroir-related flavor characteristics. Just as artisan farmers specialize in producing microgreens and baby vegetables for top restaurants and gourmet homes, some pepper farmers are now focusing on growing the best peppercorns for chefs and connoisseurs.

Top restaurant chefs are always on the hunt for the next exciting ingredient, and pepper offers them versatility. Acclaimed chef Philippe Trosch, who recently left the Ventana Room in Tucson to start his own restaurant, had introduced a highly popular pepper-pairing program that offered guests a nightly selection of 12 to 15 peppercorn varieties. Based on what they ordered, guests were given five pepper selections in small pewter bowls, plus samples to take home to continue the tasting. For foie gras, which has a fat content that can stand up to a more robust pepper, Trosch chose spicier black Malabar pepper. For fish, which has more delicate flavors and less fat, he selected a milder pepper, such as Lampong. Roasted rabbit tenderloin with pancetta-and-braised-turnip mustard sauce has strong flavors that can stand up to Szechuan black pepper.

Choose your terroir: Pick your black peppercorns based on your preferred level of heat and specific flavor nuances.

Pepper goes straight through to the dessert table. Just as salt perks up any dish, pepper adds a dab of spice to pies, cookies, poached pears, baked apples, even ice cream and sorbet. In his book, Aquavit And the New Scandinavian Cuisine, Chef Marcus Samuelsson of New York City’s Aquavit restaurant serves up a Black Pepper Cheesecake; on Nantucket, a beautiful Pink Peppercorn Cheesecake by Chef Chris Freeman graces the menu at Oran Mor Bistro. Paris’s famed patissier Pierre Hermé is into black Sarawak pepper with fruit: You can make his Sweet Tomato “Tartare,” Black Sarawak Pepper & Coriander, Raspberry & Red Bell Pepper Sorbet and his Pineapple Carpaccio WIth Crystallized Coriander and Green Lime Sorbet (same link). At the risk of including ourselves in the same paragraph with Marcus Samuelsson and Pierre Hermé, we’ve added our own recipe for Strawberry Peppercorn Sorbet below.

• You now can purchase five or more “single origin” black or white peppercorns and notice completely different aroma and flavor profiles. Just as you choose different chardonnay growing regions if you prefer more fruit and less acid, and tropical fruit rather than apple notes, you can go beyond India to Ecuador, Indonesia, Vietnam and other points around the equatorial belt to find the peppercorn that gives you the aroma, heat and flavor components you prefer.
• What was formerly a “seasoning” is now a key flavor ingredient: as a focus garnish on foie gras, in a pepper crust on a tenderloin or as the hot counterpoint in a frozen dessert. With so many varieties of pepper to pair with so many different foods, there’s no stopping imaginative chefs.

To borrow from the oyster, the world is your peppercorn. Our Top Pick Of The Week is not any one gourmet pepper, but all of them. We’ve provided shopping resources, from 4-ounce bags through beautiful gift samplers (that make a nice gift for yourself), below.

Before you plunge into the rest of this newsletter, we’ll give you the heads up that it’s long. Think of it as a seminar on peppercorns. If you don’t have time to read it now, print it out for later. If you do print it out, it may look better printed out from the website version. As a reference document, we’ll be updating the website copy as new peppercorns and other information become available.

What Is Pepper

Black pepper, botanically known as Piper nigrum, from the family Piperaceae, has been the world’s most popular spice for 3,000 years, treasured by ancient Egyptians, Greeks and Romans—the pharaohs were buried with precious peppercorns in their noses. For much of its history, pepper was known as “Black Gold,” a term still used in India today. Native to the western hills of India, traders carried pepper to Java and other countries. It was so treasured that the search for its source and control of the trade influenced world exploration, and thus, history. Vasco da Gama circumnavigated Africa to reach the Malabar Coast of India, which enabled Portugal to gain a monopoly on pepper for almost a century. That made Lisbon the European trading center for spices, nearly ruining Alexandria, Genoa and Venice.

Pepper was of key importance to season and preserve meats, and to overcome the odors of rancid food. By the Middle Ages in Europe, pepper was so valuable that it was worth more than gold by weight, and individual peppercorns were widely accepted as legal currency for dowries, taxes and rents. It was also gold for one’s health. The original pepper merchants, along with spice merchants, were the predecessors of apothecaries: Pepper and pepper oil were components of most European medicines of the time.

Pepper comprises more than 25% of the world trade in spices, yet is grown in only a handful of countries within 15 degrees of the equator. The word pepper derives from the Sanskrit pippali, which referred to the long pepper, piper longum; the word for the round Piper nigrum is marica. However, the Greeks and Romans adapted pippali to refer to either pepper: In Latin the word became piper and in Old English, pipor.

As with wine, coffee, chocolate, cheese and many foodstuffs, country and region of origin are important to the quality of the product, both for the growing environment (“terroir”), which imparts different flavor qualities, and the craftsmanship of the producers. As connoisseurship of peppercorns grows, individuals will find their taste preferences, whether they be the floral Sarawak from Malaysia, the super-hot Talamanca del Caribe from Ecuador or something else entirely.

By the way, the use of the word “pepper” to mean “spirit” or “energy” dates at least as far back as the 1840s: In the early 20th century, it was shortened to “pep.”

What’s Wrong With Supermarket Pepper

Most pepper-producing countries grow the crop as a commodity, to be sold at a prefixed price per ton. Margins are slim, there’s no bonus paid for quality and there’s no room for error: The longer the berries are left on the vine, the greater the risk of birds or storms imperiling the crop. The berries are picked as soon as they form on the vine, resulting in meager little peppercorns whose flavors have not had a chance to develop—like a tomato that is picked from the vine too early. Brazil produces a large commodity crop; much of the black peppercorns sold in our supermarkets comes from there. (However, quality green peppercorns come from Brazil as well.)

In other countries, like India and Malaysia, fine pepper is part of the cultural heritage. Malabar, Tellicherry (both from India) and Sarawak (Malaysia) corns are of moderate to large size and have the bold, rich flavors that make them “gourmet” pepper. Growing and harvesting the crop is artisanal work: The knowledge gained over centuries of farming and processing peppercorns continues to evolve. Traditionally, for example, fine peppercorns are dried in the sun for about a week. But it has been found that sun-drying evaporates a good portion of flavor, while indoor drying with hot air retains it. As a result, the Ministry of Agriculture of Sarawak, the largest state in the Federation of Malaysia, is helping farmers to build this capability. In India, sheltering the pepper from the elements produces more fully-flavored, cleaner peppercorns—a technique developed at the request of German sausage-makers who wanted extra-clean pepper for their cold-curing process, and were willing to pay more for it. When you start to taste gourmet pepper, you’ll discover layers of flavor—berries, citrus and other spice flavors from cinnamon to anise—and aromas that give these peppercorns star power. We enjoyed eating them “straight”—crunching down on the corns—while writing this article.

Kalimantan (Borneo) Sarawak is one of the two states plus a federal territory that comprise the nation of Malaysia, which shares the island of Kalimantan (Borneo) with the nation of Indonesia and the sultanate of Brunei. There are other Malaysian states and territories on the Asian mainland. Kalimantan is the third largest island in the world; “Borneo” is a Western name bestowed by the Dutch during their colonial period and is never used locally. Map courtesy of Wikipedia.

So, next time you go to purchase pepper and see what looks like price value on generic peppercorns, you’ll know why. It doesn’t pay to buy giant bottles of peppercorns at price clubs. First, they’re not likely to be top-quality. Second, even if the bottles say “Telllicherry,”** pepper loses flavor and aroma through evaporation and exposure to light. Keeping a jumbo jar on the shelf for three years or more to save a few dollars is not doing yourself a service. You might as well buy the best: A few peppercorns go a long way (how often do you refill your peppermill?).

**It is worth noting that, as with any region-designated product, not all products are created equal. There is no one uniform “Tellicherry” as there is no uniform “Kona”: Different producers grow and process products that have different qualities. Spice merchants may carry some “top of the line” offerings within a varietal.

Read more about the different types of Piper nigrum—black, white and green—and other spices called “pepper,” in the next section.

Varietal Pepper Glossary:
Meet The Peppers, & Learn What To Do With Them

There are about twenty types of pepper in our glossary: More will join them as new peppers become available in the U.S. Only half are Piper nigrum, true pepper, and they are so designated below. The rest are from other plants, with a shape and/or flavor that approximates pepper. Most can be used interchangeably as table seasonings. Some work better with different cuisines. Whether you are cooking, baking or looking for an attractive plate garnish, there’s a treasure chest of peppercorns to play with and new tricks to add to your culinary repertoire. Remember that, as with any food product, quality can vary widely. In the case of pepper it affects aromatics as well as flavor.

And now, the peppers:

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without written permission. Write to Editors at TheNibble.com.

Black Peppercorns. The black peppercorn, Piper nigrum, is the largest category of pepper: corns are available from a variety of origins. Some are more robust, some more delicate; some have notes of pine, some have cinnamon spice. The most popular form of pepper in the U.S., the berries are picked before they fully mature, when the green berries have turned to gold but have not yet ripened to red. They are boiled briefly in hot water, both to clean them and to prepare them for drying, then allowed to ferment and dry naturally in the sun until the fruit shrinks and darkens into a thin, wrinkled black layer around the seed. Once dried, the fruits are called peppercorns. Black pepper is hot†, pungent and aromatic: the spicy heat derives largely from the piperine compound, which is found both in the outer fruit and in the seed. The outer fruit layer contains volatile oils that give pepper its scent. Colors range from deep brown to purple-black.

†How hot is it? Not very: Milligram-for-milligram, refined piperine is about 1% as hot as the capsaicin in chile peppers.

• Ecuador. See Talamanca Del Caribe, below.
• Lampong. Cultivated on theisland of Sumatra in Indonesia, Lampong is a smaller-size corn, similar to Sarawak black peppercorns, but hotter than Sarawak due to a higher amount of piperine. The peppercorns have a strong, earthy and smoky aroma with a hint of cinnamon. Lampong is the black peppercorn sold most often in the U.K.—they like their pepper hot—but the heat and flavor are extremely well-balanced, and they are milder than Malabar and Tellicherry. Lampong Samanca is the historical name for the modern port city of Kota Agung in southern Sumatra, Indonesia.
  Use It: In stocks, soups and dishes when you are looking for pungency. Chef Trosch uses them on salmon.
• Malabar. One of the finest black peppers available, it is grown on the Malabar Coast, a small, mountainous area on the southwest of India known for producing the highest quality peppercorns. Berries that become Tellicherry (see below) grow together on the same vine, but Malabar pepper is picked from the lower part of the vine and is picked earlier (and less ripe than) Tellicherry—when the berries have turned from green to yellow. The Malabar corns have a slightly greenish hue. While Malabar peppercorns are noticeably larger in size and more potent than supermarket peppercorns, they are smaller and less potent than Tellicherry, both on the nose and on the palate.
  Use For: Malabar has universal appeal. It is an excellent pepper with robust flavor, available at a more reasonable price than Tellicherry. Try them with pork.
• Madagascar. The island nation off the southwest coast of Africa that grows great vanilla also grows fine pepper, although 98% of it gets exported to France (Madagascar is a former French colony). Madagascan pepper is very popular with French chefs. The corn is of medium size and brownish-gray, and highly aromatic, with a smoky aroma, medium heat and a hickory finish. It is beginning to trickle into the U.S., but if you can’t find it, send friends traveling to France on a shopping trip.
  Use It: With meats, shellfish, pasta, risotto, polenta and any foods that are appealing to pair with smoky nuances. It is very popular in sauces for steak: Wolfgang Puck offers a New York Steak with Madagascar Pepper & Port Wine Sauce in his book, Modern French Cooking for the American Kitchen. Here is a copy of the recipe, although it substitutes a more readily-available black, green and pink peppercorn mix for the harder-to-come-by Madagascar pepper.
• Sarawak. Grown in East Malaysia, Piper nigrum yields a smaller black berry with a slightly grayish hue. It has a milder flavor and more fresh aroma than pungent Telllicherry, that is often described as fruity.

• Talamanca Del Caribe. A varietal relatively new to the scene, this bold peppercorn is grown in small quantities in Ecuador and is certified organic. Ecuadorian peppercorns tend to be very high in piperine. They have a sweet, searing fragrance, but due to all of the piperine, they deliver intense heat. It has a very robust, meaty flavor and pungent aroma that will knock the socks off pepper lovers—and further intimidate the wary.
  Use It: The piperines will ratchet up the pepperiness of anything: It goes well with steak. This is a peppercorn for those who love hot chiles.
• Vietnam. Vietnam produces a fine black pepper, and is one of the largest exporters of black peppercorns. The berries are good-sized and have a citrusy aroma and taste. Its peppercorns are not as strong as those from other areas, but have a complex aroma—so people who like a rounder heat and spiciness but more on the nose should look for them.
  Use It: On fish, in desserts.

Cubeb Berries (or Tailed Pepper or Java Pepper). If you see what look like peppercorns with stems (tails) attached, you’re looking at cubeb, Piper cubeba, a cousin in the same family, Piperaceae, as Piper nigrum. Cultivated for its fruit and essential oil, it is grown on the Indonesian islands of Java and Sumatra. The fruits are gathered before they are ripe, and carefully dried. The dried, wrinkled fruit can be grayish-brown or black. The seed is hard, white and oily.

Green Peppercorns. These are immature black Piper nigrum peppercorns, picked long before maturity while still unripe and actually green in color.

Grains Of Paradise (or Melegueta Pepper or Paradise Nuts or True Grains Of Paradise). Native to Ghana and Liberia in West Africa, Grains Of Paradise are related to cardamom; the seeds, or grains, of the plant are hot and spicy. See Melegueta Pepper for detailed information. There are numerous references in the literature to two different species for the “Grains of Paradise” spice, a.k.a. the Melegueta Pepper, that are cited by writers (including botanists and culinary authors). They are Aframomum melegueta and Aframomum granum paradisi, both of the family Zingiberaceae. However, the dozens of references to melegueta pepper we have read exactly describe the cardamom-like spice that is Aframomum melegueta: We have seen no description of a second type of spice. One old reference says that they are the same spice, that had been given different botanical names at different times. We’ll update this listing if we learn more. Current scholarship leans to Aframomum melegueta as the appropriate botanical name.

Use It: Crushed on venison and other game, whole in marinades and braises, on barbecue, in rotisserie seasonings. Of course, allspice is a major ingredient in jerk seasoning. It was one of the spices used by the Aztecs to flavor their chocolate beverage.

Melegueta Pepper (Alligator Pepper or Grains Of Paradise or Guinea Grains or Meleguetta Pepper). Aframomum melegueta, from the Zingiberaceae family (the ginger family), is also popularly known as Grains Of Paradise. It was named by the Portuguese traders in the fifteenth century, who encountered it along the stretch of West African coast they called the Malagueta (now Liberia). The melegueta pepper was soon overshadowed by chiles from the Americas, and dwindled in importance in both Africa and Europe.**

Melegueta Pepper is not related to Malagueta Pepper, above. Given the similarity of the spelling, and the variations on the spelling of melegueta, most people—even authors of food books—have erroneously assumed it is the same spice. However, as with Christopher Columbus naming the hot chiles he found in the New World “peppers,” because his only frame of reference was the [totally unrelated] black peppercorn, the Portuguese traders who knew the hot melegueta seeds from Africa also named the hot Brazilian chile “malagueta.”
**Kenneth Kiple, The Moveable Feast: Ten Millennia Of Food Globalization, 2007: Cambridge University Press, p. 58.

‡Other peppers in this glossary have a long history of medicinal and homeopathic use, but we have not focused on them. Szechuan pepper, for example, is used as an oral analgesic, a diuretic, to treat tapeworm, etc.

Pickled Pepper. The more fragile green and pink peppercorns are often pickled (packed in brine or vinegar) after picking. To everyone who ever wondered what exactly Peter Piper picked when he picked a peck of pickled peppers: It might have been eight quarts (a quarter-barrel) of peppercorns in brine. If so, it’s no surprise that people were wondering where the peck of pickled peppers was that Peter Piper picked, because it would have been worth quite a lot of money. Pickled peppercorns should be rinsed thoroughly before use.

Pink Peppercorns (Rose Pepper or Red Peppercorns). Pink peppercorns are often found for sale in mixes with black, white and green peppercorns, leading one to think that they’re a form of Piper nigrum—but they’re no relative of any kind. They’re berries from the Baies Rose Plant (Schinus molle, family Anacardiaceae), a small mastic tree related to the rose bush, from the French Island of Reunion in the Indian Ocean. The trees are often sprayed with PE3, a pesticide; but organic pink pepper is available.

Red Peppercorns. See “Pink Pepper,” above. Any recipe calling for “Red Peppercorns” is referring to pink pepper, and not to “red pepper,” which refers to finely ground cayenne, a chile pepper.)

Szechuan Peppercorns (or Chinese Pepper, Japanese Pepper, Prickly Ash, Sichuan Pepper and Szechwan Pepper). These are berries from a prickly ash tree (Zanthoxylum piperitum of the family Rutaceae) that is native to the Szechuan province of China. It is a small tree, or large thorny shrub, that is similar in appearance to ash trees, but unrelated: The plant is in the Rue, or citrus, family. Prickly Ash, also known as fagara, grows mainly in China, Japan and Korea. The tree’s rust-colored berries have hair-thin stems and open ends that split apart when dry to reveal a brittle black seed. The spice consists mainly of the empty husks, which have a different flavor from the seeds. Szechuan pepper is stronger and more pungent than most black pepper, with a peppery bouquet and a woodsy (some find anise, clove, cumin, ginger and lavender, based on provenance) and resinous flavor, moderate heat and a long finish. The berries are a key ingredient in many Chinese and Japanese dishes. The peppercorns are often lightly roasted before crushing in a mortar and pestle. Szechuan peppercorns are an ingredient in Chinese Five Spice Powder, Shichimi Togarashi (Japanese 7-spice powder, a blend that typically includes ginger, red pepper, roasted orange peel, the peppercorns, yellow and black sesame seeds, and seaweed), and and Szechuan Peppered Salt, a combination of toasted and finely ground peppercorns and sea salt. It is usually used to flavor soups or noodles as well as yakitori. For years there was an FDA ban on the import of Szechuan pepper because of a concern that it might bring new strains of citrus cankers to the U.S. to threaten domestic citrus crops; the problem was solved by heat-treating the pepper before export, and the ban was lifted in 2005. Szechuan pepper will leave the palate tingling: The berry contains numbing compounds that are used medicinally as a local anesthetic.
Use It: With fish and poultry, in soups and stews, in any dish where spicy heat is desired, and of course, with Asian cooking.

Urfa Biber (or Smoky Turkish Pepper). This spice, like Aleppo Pepper, comes from Turkey, near the border of Syria and the Aleppo Valley, and is made from a ground chile pepper. It is deep purple in color with an arresting scent and a smoky, raisin-like flavor (raisin is a note found in ancho and pasilla chiles).
Use It: Traditionally it is used to flavor meat dishes, but it also complements vegetables beautifully. The purple grains make a stunning plate garnish as well: Seek out Urfa Biber for its visual beauty as well as its seasoning contribution.

White Peppercorns. Actually beige in color, white pepper is Piper nigrum that is hotter, but less pungent and aromatic, than black pepper. In the U.S. and Continental Europe, white pepper is commonly used for aesthetic reasons: to avoid black flecks interfering with the look of light-colored sauces, soups, beverages, potatoes, fish and chicken dishes. In England and northern Europe, the hotter taste of white pepper is preferred: It outsells black pepper by 10:1. To make white pepper, the Piper nigrum berries are allowed to fully ripen before picking. They then are soaked in water for 48 hours so that the fruit softens and decomposes; any remainder is rubbed off and the naked seed is dried. (Due to the extra processing involved, white pepper is slightly more expensive than black varieties from the same location.) Because the outer layer of dried fruit left on the black peppercorn contains volatile oils, the perfume—the citrusy, woodsy and floral notes of black pepper—is mostly missing in white pepper. However, white pepper can acquire scent from its longer fermentation stage. It is the reduction in aromatics that focuses attention on the flavor and makes the white pepper seems hotter.

Muntok white peppercorns are more beige in color than the whiter and costlier Sarawak corns.

• Muntok White Pepper. The most common variety of white pepper, Muntok is grown on the small Indonesian Island of Bangka. They are the Lampong black peppercorn with the dried fruit cover removed. The berries are named after the island’s main port. They are a bit lower in grade than Sarawak, but still have the rich, winey flavor.
  Use In: Braises and marinades, instead of the more expensive Sarawak; in soups, on grilled meats and poultry, in light-colored dishes, or mixed with black peppercorns for a more diverse range of flavors.

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Tasting & Comparing Peppercorns

Like many things we taste at THE NIBBLE, If you purchase a variety of peppers, you’ll notice the different aromas. But as with perfumes and other strong fragrances, the first one or two will take over your nose sensors and make it difficult to smell the rest. The professional secret to clearing one’s nose is fresh, unground coffee beans: The chemical compounds in the beans miraculously clear the nose of all other scents. When we go to trade shows, we carry the beans in a shaker used for powdered sugar or grated cheese—it’s a lifesaver. We highly recommend it if you’re sampling soaps or anything with fragrances. If you’re alone at home, open up the bag or canister of coffee beans and inhale; if you’re with others, put the beans in a cup and pass it around. As with coffee beans, whole peppercorns begin to show their character with their aroma. It’s good to smell pepper from the bag or container where the scent is concentrated. Compare aromas and take notes. Then, take a peppercorn and crunch it in your mouth (if you’re tasting a series, start with the milder ones). The full flavor of pepper is released when the outer shell has been cracked. It’s exciting to bite into a peppercorn (just one!) and experience its personality.

A gift sampler of peppers from Chef Stefan.

After you get past the rush of piperine, note the other flavor characteristics. Do you taste citrus? Florals? Woodsy/earthy/vegetal/smoky notes? Hints of other spices? Unfortunately, it’s not easy to remove the pungent piperine from your palate so you can get on to tasting the next peppercorn: Piperine has a long finish. Cubes of cream cheese on water biscuits help, but if you’re having friends over for a tasting, don’t plan to sit around the table tasting, as you would with chocolate, wine or other foods. It can takes 10 or 15 minutes for your palate to be ready for the next peppercorn. We suggest renting an inspiring food DVD, like Babette’s Feast (or review our comprehensive list of films about food).

The Daily Grind: Mortar & Mill

What if you buy a 12-pepper sampler? Do you need to buy 12 peppermills? While it is our fantasy to have a dozen one-inch-diameter Vic Firth Pump-And-Grind Peppermills (shown at right), one for each of our varietals, the dream has not yet materialized (at $19.99 each, we have acquired just two). Vic Firth was a timpanist with the Boston Symphony Orchestra; now retired, he produces peppermills and salt mills of the highest quality, including the one shown at the right. It has a single-handed, one-finger grinding action—you can hold your fork in one hand and grind pepper with the other. It’s six inches high, but at just one inch wide, easily portable for those who must have their Tellicherry or Sarawak instead of whatever the restaurant might be dispensing. It’s a great gift for a pepper-lover, and there’s a matching salt mill ($18.99). So, barring the arrival of the peppermill fairy with the dozen Vic Firths, what’s a student of peppercorns to use, to best taste and cook with the different varieties?

Vic Firth One-Finger Action Peppermill.

Grind it the old-fashioned way, with a mortar and pestle—which, incidentally, is the best way to grind spices and herbs like basil for pesto. The flavor is much better than it is when macerated in an electric spice mill or food processor.

Grind peppercorns easily in this Thai granite mortar and pestle.

Fortuitously, the Wall Street Journal tested several recently, and recommended this Thai stone granite mortar and pestle as best overall in performance and value. It is available in 3 sizes, and it will last for generations: The vendor claims it is indestructible, and will not crack or chip no matter how hard you pound. The 6" diameter mortar has more than a 1.5-cup capacity ($27.95) The 7" diameter has more than a 2-cup capacity ($35.95) The 8" diameter has more than a 3-cup capacity ($45.95) Unless you want to start making hummus by hand, the 6" should be fine.

For much of history pepper, “Black Gold,” was so valuable that it was often used as currency—even as collateral. In the siege of Rome in the 5th century C.E., it is said that both Attila the Hun and Alaric the Visigoth demanded ransoms of more than a ton of pepper. While a pound of the world’s best Tellicherry might cost $60, most gourmet pepper can be had for $1.25 an ounce, purchased in bulk at a specialty spice store. As affordable as that sounds, coming up with a ton for ransom does run into money.

—Karen Hochman

FORWARD THIS NIBBLE to people who love pepper, and anyone who has friends who love to cook.

WHERE TO BUY VARIETAL PEPPERCORNS Chef Stefan Peppers Of The World Sampler Gift Sets Chef’s Peppers Of The World (4 Peppers & Guidebook) $29.95 Epicurean Pepper Collection (12 Peppers & Guidebook, photo at left) $79.95 ChefStefan.com Pepper-Passion Samplers White (Muntok, Sarawak or Talamanca) $30.00 Black (Lampong, Malabar, Tellicherry, Talamanca) $30.00 Black & White (Talamanca Black, Vietnamese Black, Muntok White, Talamanca White) $30.00 Rainbow (Rose, Green, Tellicherry Black, Sarawak White) $33.00 Pepper-Passion.com 4-Ounce Packages Aleppo, Brazilian, Cubeb Berries, Green, Ecuadorian, Kerala, Lampong, Pink, Sarawak, Szechuan, Tellicherry, Vietnamese and White Peppercorns $4.99 to $5.99 Kalustyans.com

Chef Stefan’s Epicurean Pepper Collection has samplers of 12 gourmet peppers plus an overview guide. Prices and produt availability are verified at publication but are subject to change. Back to Index

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ABOUT THE NIBBLE. THE NIBBLE™, Great Food Finds™, is an online magazine about specialty foods and the gourmet life. It is the only consumer publication and website that focuses on reviewing the best specialty foods and beverages, in every category. The magazine also covers tabletop items, gourmet housewares, and other areas of interest to people who love fine food.

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