Chillies, so much identified with the cooking of India and South-East Asia, actually are a newish arrival in those regions. A native of South America, it’s believed chillies were first taken back to the Old World by Christopher Columbus.
The heat of chillies comes from capsaicin, an irritant alkaloid, which has no flavour. It probably is there to protect the fruit from being eaten by mammals. Birds are immune to capsaicin and spread the seeds widely. However, human mammals, took a liking to the stimulation of the taste buds and digestion given by chillies and the excitement they add to food, and did a much better job than the birds of spreading them.
Unlike their Solanaceae family relatives tomatoes and potatoes, also brought back from the New World, chillies were quickly taken up and within 100 years their use had spread from Europe to China and South-East Asia. The Portuguese were responsible for introducing them to India through Goa, and through their colony in Macau, to China, and on through the Pacific to the Philippines. The Turks are thought to have brought them back the other way and introduced them to Hungary.
Christopher Columbus, when he set out, was in search of the Spice Islands and peppercorns, for which cheaper, dried chillies became a substitute and began the confusion of calling these members of the Capsicum family “peppersâ€. Other names are pimento in Spain and paprika in Hungary.
The larger capsicums and small chillies are both a hollow berry, and in both the red versions are just a riper version of the green ones.
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