The History Of Chili Peppers And How We Developed A Taste For Spice
At the first encounter, chili peppers can be very unpleasant, attacking the taste buds and causing actual pain. It raises the question of how the food came to be embraced so widely. How did humans develop a taste for spice?
Chili peppers have been spicing things up for thousands of years. The fiery plant has traveled the globe, and ancient civilizations liked to use them for their flavor and medicinal purposes. Today, they are a staple in cuisines worldwide.
The bright red peppers are native to the Americas. They were first cultivated in Mexico and are eaten in a variety of ways—whole, mashed into pastes or oils, smoked, dried, or fresh.
Wild chilies grew their fruits upright so birds could spread their seeds more easily, but through the process of domestication, the peppers began to hang down from the branches and receive cover from the leaves. They were originally domesticated in Central and South America.
The peppers’ early habitats were in the central Andes. Indigenous populations helped spread them to the coasts of South America, across the Caribbean Islands, and even as far north as Mexico and southern Texas.
Archaeological records have shown that chilies were grown mainly in gardens near people’s homes rather than in larger fields.
The Nahua people used chilies in rituals and meal preparation, which was documented in a 16th-century text about Aztec culture. The peppers were said to bring luck to merchants.
Cloth sellers would slip chili peppers between two pieces of cloth to improve their sales. Chilies were also included in prayer rituals to Tlaloc, the Aztec god of rain.
In the Caribbean Islands, the Taíno people valued chilies as well. They cultivated the spiciest varieties. Christopher Columbus encountered the chilies during his first voyage to the Americas.
Afterward, they spread across the world. The Portuguese were responsible for most of the chili pepper’s expansion.
In West Africa, chilies were adapted to their diets. Around 1542, the Portuguese introduced chilies to India, where they quickly became popular. From there, chilies established themselves as a culinary ingredient in Europe.
European elites considered bold, flavorful foods to be “violent.” As a result, Europe was among the last to incorporate chilies into their diets, aside from Hungary and Turkey.
The two countries developed paprika from chili peppers that arrived from India. Since the chili pepper took a while to be embraced there, Europeans mistook the plant’s origins, believing that it came from India.
By 1592, chili peppers had reached China, according to written records. The Chinese elite followed Confucian ideals, so they rejected chili peppers because of their heat and pungency.
It wasn’t until the 19th century that the elite’s attitude toward chilies changed, and they became common in regional recipes.
Chilies are a food with a rich history. As evidenced by some cultures’ initial rejection, the chili pepper did not start out as a large cash crop. Instead, it was first embraced in small kitchen gardens and worked its way up to popularity.
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