Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
pesky chemical, detectable to humans in very small concentrations and a symptom denot-
ing a flaw in both cheeses and wines. As peppers ripen, a variety of smells take this chem-
ical's place - some of which comes from those once-hidden pigments that have suddenly
become visible. All peppers have these shades of flavor, but we usually recognize only
two: hot and sweet.
Perhaps we would be wise to leave our description of peppers there. The wilds of pep-
per taxonomy are ventured into only by the very brave or very foolish. Peppers are among
the most diverse plants, with twenty-two wild families and five domesticated ones. Walk
into any Mexican market, and you'll find three or four fresh green chiles and at least half
a dozen dried red chiles. (Mature red chiles are almost always dried, both for preserving
and because they're usually ground into a powder.
Names change by region. The fresh green chile that one group has always called a
pasilla is called a poblano by another group (who use the word "pasilla" to refer to a dried
red chile). Ironically, almost all of the peppers we find in the United States - from the com-
mon green bell to the fiery jalapeno - are members of the same species: Capsicum annuum
(the main exception being the incandescent habanero, or C. chinense).
Chile peppers have a wide range of tastes, from the sharp, grassy flavor of serranos to
the rounder, sweeter flavor of jalapenos. Drying seems to exaggerate the flavor nuances,
much as fermenting brings to the fore the subtleties in wine grapes. Some chiles taste
frankly of fruit, some of chocolate, others of smoke (although the truly smoky peppers,
chipotles, are ripe jalapenos that have been dried over a smoldering fire).
The one flavor all chiles share, of course, is heat. Pepper heat comes from a chemical
called capsaicin, an irritant that causes an intense burning sensation when it touches
nerves, whether those nerves are in your mouth, on your hands, in your eyes or anywhere
else. That is why chile peppers taste so hot. It is also why pepper spray (essentially at-
omized capsaicin) is such an effective deterrent. When the active ingredient capsaicin is
rubbed into your skin, it burns. But then, according to scientists, the receptors that are
sensitive to capsaicin get overloaded and become numb.
Capsaicin is found in significant concentrations only in certain parts of the pepper -
primarily the placental veins that attach the seeds to the wall of the fruit. Despite the com-
mon cook's advice to remove the seeds to reduce the heat of a pepper, capsaicin is barely
detectable there - although if you remove the seeds, you usually remove the veins as well.
Different peppers contain different concentrations of capsaicin, ranging from the ex-
tremely potent habanero (the hottest in common commercial production) to the bell pepper
