Subject: black pepper

From: [email-masked] (Novo Nordisk Biotech)
Date: Wed, 1 Mar 1995 06:28:34 GMT

i have heard a rumor that black pepper is made black by processing
of green pepper with Glomerella cingulata. is this true?

---

From: [email-masked] (Peter Heytler)
Date: 5 Mar 1995 11:08:04 -0500

In article <[email-masked]>,
Meriah Crawford <[email-masked]> wrote:
>In article <[email-masked]>,
>Novo Nordisk Biotech <[email-masked]> wrote:
>I read (somewhere) recently that black pepper is green pepper that has 
>been "aged" and has had a fungus form on it naturally. mber 
>Meriah...

  That doesn't sound right to me, though there may be some type of
condiment prepared that way.  Common black pepper comes from a totally
different plant, and two types are in far-apart plant families with 
different habitats.
  Ordinary black peppercorns are the dried small berries of a tropical
vine (Piper nigrum). Green peppers - as well as the various other 
fleshy green, red and yellow peppers - are the fruit of various species
of Capsicum, esp. C. frutescens. Red pepper seeds, of course, come from
this type of pepper fruit.  It's certainly possible that fungus-infected
pepper-fruits could yield blackened seeds, which might be used somewhere;
I don't know.

--Peter Heytler

---

From: [email-masked] (Meriah Crawford)
Date: 4 Mar 1995 12:31:33 -0800

I read (somewhere) recently that black pepper is green pepper that has 
been "aged" and has had a fungus form on it naturally. I don't remember 
the name of the fungus, but my understanding is that "process" would 
definitely not be the right word. 

I may have read this in rec.foods.historic ?? 

Meriah...

---

From: [email-masked] (K.A.Zeller)
Date: 6 Mar 1995 15:54:42 GMT

In article <[email-masked]>, [email-masked] (Peter
Heytler) wrote:
> of Capsicum, esp. C. frutescens.[snip]
> 
> --Peter Heytler

Actually,... I think that the green peppercorns (yes these do exist) do
come from a species of Piper (I'll have to look it up in a herb & spice
book that I have at home to be sure) and that the black ones are just
fermented and dried green pepercorns.  I think you are confusing the two
types of green "pepper".  

Sorry I can't add any input into the origional question; as to what
specifically is done to make the green peppercorns into black ones.  

Kurt A. Zeller                * -- One difficulty, of course, is that no 
Dept. of Biol. Sci            * two students,... will agree entirely on the
Purdue University-W. Lafayette* relative significance of the various
<[email-masked]>* features involved.  This, however, should 
There really is fun in fungi! * discourage no one: that one's own ideas
                              * cannot be unequivocally proved to be 
                              * correct is a small price to pay for the 
                              * certainty that they will not be proved
                              * entirely wrong.--Raper and Flexer, 1971.

---

From: Kevin McCluskey <mccluske@ag>
Date: Thu, 9 Mar 1995 10:15:22 -0700

In "On Food and Cooking" by Hal McGee (1984, Scribners)
the production of black and white pepper is described. 
Black peppers are harvested green and fermented exposed to the sun.
The black color on the surface is produced by
the fungus Glomerella cingulata (the telomorph of Colletotrichum
gloeosporioides).  White pepper is harvested ripe (red), then
fermented as black pepper, but before it is dried,
the skin and some pulp is removed. 
Green and red pepper are available from some "gourmet" shops and
catalogs.  I expect that these are dried without fermenting, but the
production of these varieties was not described in the book.