Chilli

The chili pepper, chilli pepper, or chili, is the fruit of the plants from the genus Capsicum. Even though chili may be thought of as a vegetable, their culinary usage is generally as a spice, the part of the plant that is usually harvested is the fruit, and botany considers the plant a berry shrub.

The name, which is spelled chili, chile, or chilli, comes from chilli via the Spanish word chile. The term chili in most of the world refers exclusively to the smaller, hot types of Capsicum. The mild larger types are called bell pepper in the United States, Canada and sometimes the United Kingdom, sweet pepper in Britain and Ireland, capsicum in Pakistan India and Australasia, and paprika in many European countries. Bell peppers are often named simply by their color (e.g. green or red pepper).

Chili peppers and their various cultivars originate in the Americas; they are now grown around the world because they are widely used as spices or vegetables in cuisine, and as medicine.

Chili peppers have been a part of the human diet in the Americas since at least 7500 BC and perhaps earlier. There is archaeological evidence at sites located in southwestern Ecuador that chili peppers were already well domesticated more than 6000 years ago, and is one of the first cultivated crops in the Americas that is self-pollinating.

History: Chili peppers are thought to have been domesticated at least five times by prehistoric peoples in different parts of South and North America, from Peru in the south to Mexico in the north and parts of Colorado and New Mexico.

Christopher Columbus was one of the first Europeans to encounter them in the Caribbean, and called them, peppers, because of their similarity in taste, though not in appearance, with the Old World peppers of the Piper genus.

Chilies were cultivated around the globe after Columbus time. Diego Álvarez Chanca, a physician on Columbus second voyage to the West Indies in 1493, brought the first chili peppers to Spain, and first wrote about their medicinal effects in 1494.

From Mexico, at the time the Spanish colony that controlled commerce with Asia, chili peppers spread rapidly into the Philippines and then to India, China, Korea and Japan with the aid of European sailors. The new spice was quickly incorporated into the local cuisines.

An alternate sequence for chili peppers spread has the Portuguese picking up the pepper from Spain, and thence to India, as described by Lizzie Collingham in her book Curry. The evidence provided is that the chili pepper figures heavily in the cuisine of the Goan region of India, which was the site of a Portuguese colony. Collingham also describes the journey of chili peppers from India, through Central Asia and Turkey, to Hungary, where it became the national spice in the form of paprika.

Intensity: The substances that gives chili peppers their intensity when ingested or applied topically are capsaicin and several related chemicals, collectively called capsaicinoids. Capsaicin is the primary ingredient in pepper spray.

When consumed, capsaicinoids bind with pain receptors in the mouth and throat that are normally responsible for sensing heat. Once activated by the capsaicinoids, these receptors send a message to the brain that the person has consumed something hot. The brain responds to the burning sensation by raising the heart rate, increasing perspiration and release of endorphins.

The heat of chili peppers is measured in Scoville units (SHU). Bell peppers rank at 0 (SHU), New Mexico green chilies at about 1,500 SHU, jalapeños at 3,000-6,000 SHU, and habaneros at 300,000 SHU. The record for the hottest chili pepper was assigned by the Guinness Book of Records to the Naga Jolokia, measuring over 1,000,000 SHU. Pure capsaicin, which is a hydrophobic, colorless, odorless, and crystalline to waxy solid at room temperature, measures 16,000,000 SHU.