Chili peppers in European cuisine?

December 2, 2006 8:53 AM

If Europeans were responsible for bringing chili peppers to countries renowned for their spicy cuisine(Korea, Thailand, etc.), why didn't the use of chili peppers become popular in European cuisine?

When I think about Korean or Thai cuisine I can't imagine how they must have tasted like without chili peppers. But from what I've read, chili peppers were only introduced to these countries sometime in the 16th century. If Europeans have had access to chili peppers for that long, and took a liking to other things that originally came from far-off places(e.g. tea, silk, tomatoes, potatoes), why hasn't the use of chili peppers becomes as widespread in European cuisine as it has in some Asian cuisines?

posted by pravit to Society & Culture (26 answers total)

The Szeged Paprika, used in a European cuisine. I'm sure people can come up with more examples.

Do you mean northern or northwestern Europe?
posted by gimonca at 9:05 AM on December 2, 2006

It's notable that the section in Wikipedia that cites the European introduction of the chilli pepper into asia is short on references:

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.

I'm not saying it's untrue but merely that I cannot check the reference.
posted by dash_slot- at 9:09 AM on December 2, 2006

Paprika's an interesting example, too, because we think of it as a mild spice but it used to be much hotter. Sweet paprika as we know it was created in the 19th century with the invention of a mechanical way to separate the seeds and membranes — where the capasicin lives — from the flesh of peppers. Before then, all paprika was what's now sold as "hot paprika."
posted by nebulawindphone at 9:09 AM on December 2, 2006

You could argue that the British version of Indian food is so far from authentic Indian food that it's more accurate to describe it as British cuisine, and thus chilli is used a lot...

But then 'Indian' food has only really become popular in the UK in the last 40-odd years so I'm not sure if that counts.
posted by EndsOfInvention at 9:23 AM on December 2, 2006

i call shennagins. there are way too many varieties of peppers that grow all over the world. i'm sure there are a few that were native to southeast asia before the europeans showed up.
posted by lester's sock puppet at 9:23 AM on December 2, 2006

My hunch was that they didn't catch on in Europe because peppers--or at least the varieties existing at the time--wouldn't grow well at the more northern European latitudes. This guide to pepper cultivation says they need warm climates, and I think the Mediterranean would be warm enough.
posted by Brian James at 9:29 AM on December 2, 2006

I know that during the Bourbon reforms and also the Portuguese court's exile between the 17th-18th centuries, many european powers began experimenting with crops from various areas. In order to maximize profits for their empires, colonies began planting crops like sugar, coffee, etc in new areas. As portugal had colonies in India and Sri Lanka at the time, it's probable that a lot of crops were exchanged. Many of these tropical climates were more favorable to growth of these crops than the temperate european climate.

It seems like mostly food crops such as corn and potatoes were eventually adopted and cultivated in europe. Cash crops continued to be grown in the colonies, for the most part. I'd guess that during this time peppers would be considered a pretty big luxury. Aside from climate considerations, I'm not sure why this would be the case. I know that many peppers available in the US are grown in Canada, so I don't think this would affect chilis.

That being said...

I've heard so many contradictions from dietary historians/anthropologists regarding certain foods. If you ask a Latin American historian, an African historian, and a nutrional anthropologist you'd seriously get different answers about certain crops. I guess they're not reading each other's journals. I'm especially suspicious about sweet potatoes, African yams, and yams from New Guinea.

I just can't imagine how this is rapid adaption/assimilation possible. Especially since so many of these peppers are unique to their areas. Those mouse peppers in Thailand etc. I know it doesn't take long to modify a crop, but something doesn't add up. These cuisines seem too entrenched.


This NY Times article isn't exactly what you're looking for, but I thought it was really interesting at the time.
posted by Telf at 9:43 AM on December 2, 2006

Response by poster: Lester's sock puppet: I'm referring to chili peppers(capsicums) specifically in this question. There are certainly lots of other peppers indigenous to Asia.

I had trouble believing it too, but I've read several sources claiming that Europeans introduced chili peppers. But then again, it was also mindboggling for me when I found out that Europeans didn't always have potatoes.

I know next to nothing about Hungarian cuisine, so it was interesting to read that they do, in fact, use red pepper powder and have spicy food(though I've never tried, so I wouldn't know how spicy it is, comparatively). I guess what I meant was that I never really associate English, German, French, or Italian cuisine with any sort of "spicy" flavor caused by chili peppers. Perhaps I'm wrong, but it would seem to me that chili peppers are not a very important ingredient in these cuisines and are used rarely, if at all. However, the chili pepper is extensively used in Asian cuisines from Korea, down through (some parts of) China, into Southeast Asia, and down to Indonesia. They would be radically different without it.

Considering the potato became so popular in all of Europe and Italians managed to adopt tomatoes, is there something about chili peppers that prevented their widespread adoption in Europe?
posted by pravit at 9:43 AM on December 2, 2006

i'm sure there are a few that were native to southeast asia before the europeans showed up.

I call "shennigans" on that, whatever that means. If you have a source that shows that chili peppers existed outside the New World before Columbus, I'd love to see it.
posted by grouse at 9:43 AM on December 2, 2006

The chili peppers are used in neapolitan cuisine. there we call it 'peperoncino' and we use it with spaghetti very often. By rule of thumb, chili peppers and more generally hot spices are often present in places influenced by spanish domination.

So, why it's not so widespread? Just speculation: in Europe there were more available spices that anyone could buy or plant very easily, particularly on mediterranean shores.
posted by darkripper at 9:47 AM on December 2, 2006

Response by poster: Telf: did not see your answer before I posted. I've thought of how well peppers would grow in European climates as well, but after all, weren't Europeans content with importing massive amounts of tea from Asia since they didn't have it themselves?

Also, Korea is a pretty cold place, but they use red pepper like crazy in the food there. I would imagine they grow all their own pepper since they use it so much. The wiki article on kimchi also suggests that kimchi was not spicy until (relatively) recently. It's bizarre to think that Thai cuisine managed to get by without Thai peppers, but I've yet to read anything suggesting they were originally indigenous to Thailand.
posted by pravit at 9:51 AM on December 2, 2006

No, lester. Peppers are New World plants. They evolved in Central America, and before Columbus they were unknown in Europe or Asia (For that matter, so were potatoes, tomatoes, corn, eggplants....) It's just that we've gotten accustomed to them, having had them around for over 500 years.

As for the varieties, those come from artificial selection. Over the 500 years since Europe and Asia got their hands on peppers, they've been selectively breeding them to make new strains. So yeah, there are "European" or "Asian" pepper varieties — but they're all members of the same three or four species that were brought over from America, and they're all new within the last five centuries.
posted by nebulawindphone at 9:51 AM on December 2, 2006

I just can't imagine how this is rapid adaption/assimilation possible.

Consider how quickly American corn and potatoes were adopted in Europe, a process that is very well documented.
posted by LarryC at 9:58 AM on December 2, 2006

All chilli peppers and in fact many common vegetables (potatoes, tomatoes, squashes, corn/maize, and others) have their origin in the Americas. Yes, it's crazy and it's one of the themes of Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel. If the native americans were sitting on all this plant diversity, why didn't they do more with it? ("more" in this context really just means "act more like europeans" but whatever).

Now, there are "hot" tasting plants that are native to southeast asia, but none of them are "chilli" peppers as in genus Capsicum. On the other hand, pepper (as in peppercorns) is native to India.
posted by R343L at 10:03 AM on December 2, 2006

Natural air-conditioning: Chilis make you sweat which can cool you down - a feature appreaciated in hot climates.
posted by MonkeySaltedNuts at 10:04 AM on December 2, 2006

oops, should have previewed.
posted by R343L at 10:05 AM on December 2, 2006

I'm Portuguese and I can tell you we do use chilli peppers. Either raw or dried up, we use it on some dishes that are considered traditional like fish rice or in many meat dishes. So do most African dishes I've eaten (mainly from Cape Verde or Angola, former portuguese colonies).

My grandfather wouldnt eat a meal without slicing a chilli into his dish and kept a chilli pepper plant in a vase in the kitchen.

The ones we use are quite small but hot. I've seen bigger ones in Italy. Remember Penne all'Arrabiata?
posted by claudiadias at 10:12 AM on December 2, 2006

Also, I've read a portuguese book on gastronomy which stated that in Medieval Portugal pepper and chilli peppers were used abundantly to disguise the taste of rotten meat :)

Can sanitary conditions and the use of hot spices be linked?
posted by claudiadias at 10:17 AM on December 2, 2006

chiming in with darkripper. peperoncino is used a fair amount in Italian cusine. Mainly in the southern half, but I cop to knowing less about northern cusine. Just of the top of my head:

- Calabria, I believe, has a peperoncino spread used on bruschetta as well as various spicy salami.
- an Abruzzese friend of mine used one fresh peperoncino from his mom's garden in a pasta one time; it made my face turn red and my eyes and nose runs like a garden spigot. it was also one of the best damn pastas I've ever had so I ate the entire thing, snuffling and wiping my eyes the entire time. While visiting the region, I noted that the local residents heap this peperoncino on many things, most notably in the pasta e fagioli.
- all'arrabbiata would roughly translate to 'angry pasta' and is a sauce based on peperoncino.
- similarly pizza al diavolo would mean 'devil's pizza' and refers to the (sometimes extremely) spicy salami used.
- peperoncino is used according to taste when marinating mussels
posted by romakimmy at 10:25 AM on December 2, 2006

- Calabria, I believe, has a peperoncino spread used on bruschetta as well as various spicy salami.

The famous nduja, even know as "the natural viagra", because many says is a strong aphrodisiac :)
posted by darkripper at 11:46 AM on December 2, 2006

I hadn't really heard about this before. but if credit is given to the Spanish for taking capsicums to Asia, then that makes some sense as capsicums are used quite extensively in Spanish cuisine. Other people have given examples of other southern European countries that use them too, so it's really just Northern Europe where they didn't catch on...
posted by ob at 11:52 AM on December 2, 2006

They evolved in Central America, and before Columbus they were unknown in Europe or Asia (For that matter, so were potatoes, tomatoes, corn, eggplants....)

True of all those as far as I know except for eggplant, aka aubergine (Solanum melongena), which, according to the Oxford Companion to Food, originated in India. The OCF quotes this passage concerning the name from a 1927 French work on legumes:

The word aubergine is amongst those which must fill with joy the souls of those philologists whose innocent mania is to claim that every term in the language derives from Sanskrit; without in the least being forced into the tortuous acrobatics such exercises usually entail, they may elegantly and painlessly prove that vatin grana, the name of the aubergine in Sanskrit, gave birth to the Persian badingen, from which the Arabs derived albadingen, which via the Spanish albadingena became the aubergine.

Now where is food writing such as that, today?
posted by jamjam at 11:54 AM on December 2, 2006

Somehow albadingena evolved to berenjena and beringela in spanish and portuguese, respectively. But where does the italian melanzana come from?
posted by claudiadias at 12:10 PM on December 2, 2006

probably a reference to the deep pigmentation, claudiadias
posted by Good Brain at 12:24 PM on December 2, 2006

>>I call "shennigans" on that, whatever that means
It is a South Park reference.
posted by allelopath at 3:30 PM on December 2, 2006

shennigans is also a fark reference. and now i'll call shennigans on myself. i'm sure there were new world varieties that were brought into southeast asia by europeans. i'll shut up now, and just eat 'em. sorry for the noise.
posted by lester's sock puppet at 4:57 PM on December 2, 2006