Spices and How to Know Them

Black pepper is one of the earliest spices known to mankind, being of extreme antiquity. Choice spices and rare gums were among the precious treasures of the kings of Egypt more than two thousand years before the Christian era. The history of its development from earliest times is well brought out by the account given in the Pharmacopœia. According to Fluckiger and Hanbury the spice was well known as early as the fourth century B. C. Arrian, the author of Periplus of the Frythrean Sea, which was written about A. D. 618, states that pepper was then imported from Barake, the shipping place of Nelkunda localities, which have been identified with points on the Malabar coast. To this spice, Venice, Genoa, and other commercial cities of central Europe are indebted for much of their wealth. The caravan of trading Midianites, who purchased Joseph from his brethren and sold him into Egypt were bearers of “spices and balm” for the Egyptian market, and when the sons of Jacob were making preparations to visit the land the second time to propitiate the lord of the realm, their father said to them: “Take of the best fruits of the land and carry down a little balm, and a little honey, spice, and myrrh, nuts and almonds.” During the palmy days of Egypt, when they embalmed all of their distinguished dead, precious gums and fragrant pungent spices were largely called into requisition. Even the Israelites in their ritualistic worship held in such high esteem many of these rare gums and oils that their law forbade their use for any other purpose. Pepper received mention in the epic poems of the ancient Hindoos. Theophrastus differentiated between round and long pepper, Diascarides mentioned long pepper, white pepper and black pepper, and Pliny, the naturalist, expressed his surprise that it should come into general use considering its want of flavor, and he states that the price of pepper in his time at Rome was nine shillings and four pence per pound, English money. Both he and Diascarides, as well as Hippocrates, write of the medicinal virtues of spices and of their use in medicine. Pepper has been so scarce at times and so expensive that one pound was considered a royal present, and was used like money as a medium of exchange, while at other times its market value has been very low. In its frequent mention by Roman writers of the Augustan age we are told that it was used by them to pay tribute. One of the articles demanded by Alaric, the daring ruler of the barbaric Visigoths in 410 A. D., of this conquered and greatly humiliated race was 3,000 pounds of pepper. During this dark middle age pepper was so costly that rents were paid in pepper corn, the amount being about one pound at stated times. Even now in places this custom still continues. It is not, therefore, surprising that during the first centuries of the Christian era the common black pepper was prized as highly in the city of Rome as its weight in gold. Black pepper is found in the East Indian Islands, among which may be mentioned the Malay Archipelago, Java, Sumatra, Rhio, Johore. It is also a native of Siam and Cochin China, and it grows wild in the forests of Malabar and Travancore. It is cultivated in some parts of the United States and in the West India Islands. The early history of the pepper trade is similar to that of other Eastern spices. The Dutch for a long time confined the cultivation of it to the Island of Java. To accomplish this they forced its cultivation with so much earnestness that they defeated their own purpose and a more enlightened system has prevailed for the past thirty years. Since it is no longer under government monopoly, and entire freedom is allowed in the raising of this spice, its cultivation has been greatly increased. The king of Portugal contracted with middlemen in each of his forts on the coast of Malabar for an annual supply of 30,000 quintals of pepper, and bound himself to send five ships every year to export that amount. All risk was held by the middlemen or farmers “who landed it in Portugal.” As a compensation for this risk, the middlemen obtained the price of twelve ducats a quintal and had great and strong privileges: “First, that no man of what estate or condition soever he be, either Portingall or of any place in India, may deale or trade in pepper, but they upon paine of death which is very sharply looked into. And although the pepper were for the king’s own person, yet must the farmers pepper be first laden to whom the Viceroy and other officers and Captains of India must give all assistance, helpe and favour with watching same and all other things whatsoever that shall by said farmers be required for the safetie and benefite of the said pepper.” In fact, it was because the price of pepper was so high during the Middle Ages that the Portuguese were led to seek a sea route to India. After the passage around the Cape of Good Hope had been discovered, about 1496, there was a considerable reduction in the price of pepper, and when it began to be cultivated in the Islands of the Malay Archipelago, another reduction was made. It, however, remained a monopoly of the Portuguese crown for many years, even as late as the eighteenth century. The earliest reference to a trade in pepper in England is A. D. 978-1016, when it was enacted that traders bringing their ships to Billingsgate should pay at Christmas and Easter, with other tributes, ten pounds of pepper. Great Britain derived a duty from it for centuries, and as late as 1623 this duty was five shillings, or about $1.20 per pound. English grocers were known as “Peppers.” Even in 1823 the duty was two shillings and six pence per pound. The pepper alluded to by Pliny at his time in Rome must have been the product of Malabar, the nearest part of India to Europe, and must have cost in Malabar about 2d. per pound. It probably went to Europe by crossing the Indian and Arabian oceans with the easterly monsoon, sailing up the Red Sea, crossing the desert, and then going down the Nile, and making its way along the Mediterranean. This voyage in our time can be made in one month; at that time it probably took eighteen months. Transit and custom duties must have been paid over and over again and there must have been plenty of extortion. These facts will explain how pepper could not be sold in the Roman market under fifty-six times its prime cost. Immediately previous to the discovery of the route to India by the Cape of Good Hope we find that the price of pepper in the market of Europe had fallen to 6s. a pound, or 3s. 4d. less than in the time of Pliny. What probably contributed to this fall in price was the superior skill in navigation of the now converted Mohammedan Arabs, Turks, and Venetians, and the extension of their commerce in the Eastern Archipelago, which abounded in pepper. Black pepper was then for many years considered a very choice article and, like gold, silver, and precious stones, it was possessed only by persons of wealth, and was for generations found only on royal tables and those of the rich and noble who aspired to rank with the rulers of the realm. The British gave up the chief pepper ground of the world, which was the grand Island of Sumatra, to the Dutch for the small Dutch colony in Western Africa, which has involved both nations in little wars and has cost the Dutch more lives and money than it is worth; but prestige must also be sustained, and general after general returned with a shattered reputation from the “_Atyeh_,” as the Dutch called Acheen. When the East India Company first formed a settlement on the coast of Sumatra, it directed its attention to produce large growths of pepper. A stipulation was made with some of the native chiefs, binding them to compel their subjects each to cultivate a certain number of pepper vines, and the whole product was to be delivered to the company’s agents at a price far below the actual cost of cultivation and harvesting. The chiefs for a long time enforced obedience to this arbitrary measure and their success in this was supposed to be permanently assured by granting them an allowance proportionate to the quantity of pepper delivered. This arbitrary practice was too keenly felt by the natives to be endured, and, the influence of the chiefs soon declining and the people becoming negligent in the cultivation, the annual supply fell off. The chiefs, unable longer to maintain their despotic practice, abandoned to the agents of the company the task of obliging the people to labor that others might reap. Now the rights of the people are more respected and the injustice of the methods formerly used are fully acknowledged; the cultivation of pepper in Sumatra, as well as elsewhere, is free. Perhaps the earliest writer to describe the extent of the cultivation of pepper was Linschoten. He speaks of its coming from Mala or Malabar, and his friend and commentator of pepper, Paludanus, enters into a long account of its medicinal virtues. “It warmeth the mawe,” he writes, “and consumeth the cold slymenes thereof to ease the payne in the mawe which proceedeth of rawnesse and winde, it is good to eat fyve pepper cornes everie morning. He that hath a bad or thick sight, let him use pepper cornes with annis fennel seed and cloves for there by the mystinesse of the eyes which darken the sight is cleared and driven away.” But in modern medicine it is very little used, being rarely prescribed except indirectly as an ingredient of some compound. Black pepper is the dried fruit of the _piper nigrum_, a perennial climbing shrub indigenous to the forests of _Travancore_, a native state in India, province of Madras, and of Malabar, a province of India, from which it has been introduced into the other countries mentioned. Two species of piper will be found under drugs, “Cubebs” and a third falls within the range of the articled drugs “_Kava-Kava_,” and _Narcotics_; and two others are dealt with under “_Narcotics_.” There remain then for description as spice, black pepper, white pepper, long pepper, and Ashantee pepper. In planting a new garden where no wild pepper vines are to be had, level land is selected which borders on a river or small stream without much sloping, but not so low as to be liable to any overflow from the stream, as the land must be kept well drained. Pepper is a hardy plant and will grow on almost any soil, but not on old, worn-out plantations or on poor sandy or clay soil, as more depends on the soil than on the cultivation. It should not be planted on hillsides because the earth will wash from the roots in time of rains. The best soil for pepper culture is a well-drained vegetable loam; swamp lands are very good in a hot climate with heavy rains. The vine may be propagated either from the seed or by cuttings. When berries are selected for seed they are first soaked for three days, when the outer coat can be removed. The seed is then dried in the shade, after which it is sown by drills in nursery beds, which are made in the usual manner in good moist soil in a shady locality. Frequent watering will be necessary, if it be a dry time, until the plants have four leaves, when they will be ready for planting. The land to be planted is to be cleared of underbrush. Sometimes large trees are burned by setting fire to their trunks. The tree will then decay and will be attacked by insects and will become a heap of rotten dust. This dust is washed by the rain around the roots of the vines, making a good fertilizer. The land cleared is next well planted and hoed and is lined out 7 × 7 feet, and holes are dug two feet square and fifteen inches deep, which are filled with good soil or leaf mold if it can be secured. In filling these holes they should not be heaped, as depressions are better for the plant, but care should be taken that all that portion of the plant underground in the nursery should be buried in the garden. The land is fenced by mud walls made into terraces. The vines need support, for if they are not supported they will spread over the ground with the result that there will be much loss of fruit. When posts are used, as is the case on the Island of Borneo, they should be twelve feet long and eight inches square, with the lower end tarred for two feet, to prevent decaying in the ground. The plantation will then have the appearance of a hop field. But there are many disadvantages in connection with the post support, as the posts must be reset at intervals (much oftener than the vines) and the removing of the post disturbs the aerial roots of the vine, which cling to them. Even if the vine be trained to its new post, it will take some time for it to attach sufficiently to receive any support or nourishment. As the poles furnish little or no shade, a severe drought will largely ruin the plants. For these reasons the use of posts has not proved a success. Different countries use different growing trees for the support, thus securing shade protection as well. Many kinds of trees are used. One of these is the mango or the bread tree, which will yield the planter one crop of fruit each year in addition to the pepper crop; but the bread tree (_artocarpus-incioa_), being of slow growth, should not be used for a support until it is twelve years old. The Jack tree (_artocarpus-integrifolia_) is sometimes used in Malabar as a second choice, but its fruit is diminished in quantity and quality by the pressure of the pepper, and sometimes the monkeys will pull them out or the crickets nip off the tops. The _erythrina-Indica_ (_erythrina coroilodendron_), a thorn tree called by the natives _chingkariang_, is much used in Sumatra for an early support. It grows quickly and is easily started by simply sticking a large branch in the ground in the rainy season. It will be capable of supporting the vine in one year, but it will soon be killed by the growing vine, not lasting more than twelve years. For this reason the mango or bread tree is planted beside it and when the _erythrina-Indica_ tree dies out the first choice mango tree (_manganifera-Indica_) is ready to take its place and will furnish support for the vine for twenty years. Moreover, the fruit of the tree will not be affected by the growing vines. Plantations are set on the tilled land from July to August about twelve paces apart. In February and March the supporting trees are planted forty feet apart. They are kept well watered during the dry season, and when ten feet high are topped and kept trimmed or the leaves are picked off so as not to shade the plant too much. If the pepper garden is small, the vines may be planted near the trees already growing. Plants raised from the seed in nurseries are transplanted in May or June, being placed in the prepared holes five feet apart with their root end from the tree and with the growing perennial vine top directed towards its support. The root should be as far distant as possible from the support. If the plants are of slow growth, manure may be applied to the surface of the ground. In China burnt earth and rotten fish are used. The land must be kept free from weeds and the plants must be kept well watered on alternate days in the dry season. The pepper vines are trained to their support in October and November. They may begin to bear fruit the first year, but do not yield much until the third or fourth year. The hoeing, training, and fertilizing are kept up twice each year in October and November and July and August. The moist earth should be heaped up and well tramped down about the plant. When the vines are six feet high they will cling to the trees without further training. The vines will bear for about fourteen years and even thirty years sometimes in extra good soil, but when past fourteen years they will usually decline in vigor and fruitfulness. The vine, after topping, is from eight to ten feet long, but if left to grow its full length will be from twenty to thirty feet long and will go to wood and bear less fruit, and the fruit would be difficult to gather. When cuttings are to be used for planting, at least three should be placed in each hole with six inches under ground or four inches above ground, the portion above ground to be directed towards the support. The plantation is next covered with leaves, dried grass, or weeds as a protection from the sun and to keep the earth moist and cool. The vines grow rapidly if it is wet weather. When they have run up the support two feet, the ends are nipped off so as to cause lateral branches to start out. In some places, when the vines are from a year to eighteen months old and have grown five feet up the support, they are carefully detached and the ends, having been coiled up in a spiral form, are buried in a hole dug in the ground close to its roots, except a small surface of the stem. This process is called letting down. It insures a large crop, producing seven or more vines to one supporting tree. Plants raised from cuttings will only bear from seven to eight years, but the quantity and quality of the pepper is far superior to that raised from the seed. The planting of the cuttings in baskets is often carried on in the following manner: The cuttings, which are about eighteen inches long, are put half a dozen in a basket; at higher altitudes more are used, sometimes as many as ten or twelve. The basket is then filled with earth and is buried at the foot of the supporting tree, care being taken that they do not touch. In October and November the ground around the baskets is dug up and the vines are manured with cow dung and leaves. The baskets are said to be a great protection to the young vines and they insure much better results. The end of the vine makes the best cutting, as it is a growing terminal bud. Vines growing wild, such as are indigenous to the forests of Malabar and Travancore, are left planted with the forest trees for their support. The surplus shade and underbrush are cut out and the ground is weeded, old vines being replaced by young ones. The product raised in this way is about as good as the cultivated. A pepper garden is generally planted with plenty of room for roads, so as to secure easy access to all parts of it and with the least possible grade, which should not be more than one foot in twenty. The garden contains anywhere from five to fifteen acres and is divided into plots by hedges of shrubs, each plot containing from five hundred to one thousand plants. The plants are pruned or thinned by hand as they grow bushy at the top, when the flexible stems generally entwine at the top of their support and then bend downward, having their extremities as well as their branches loaded with fruit. It matters not how many stalks grow from the same root until the vine begins to bear fruit, but when fruit bearing begins only one or two stems should be left, as more would weaken the root and it would not, for that reason, bear as abundantly. All suckers and side shoots must be carefully removed. Trenches are cut to the neighbor props where the vines have failed, and through these trenches superfluous shoots are conducted, where they soon ascend around the adjacent tree. By this means the plantation is of a uniform growth, and, since the ground is kept well weeded and is elevated, and since there is an open border of twelve feet wide around each garden, there is given to the plantation an admirable symmetry and neatness of appearance. [Illustration: HARVESTING OF BLACK PEPPER] [Illustration: COAST NEAR MANGALORE] The pepper vine or climbing shrub is mentioned by Sir John Mandeville in his travels of 1322 to 1356 as follows: “The pepper growethe in manere as doth a wylde vine that is planted fast by the trees of the woodee for to susteynen it by, as doth the vyne and fruyt thereof hangethe in manere as Reysinges; and the tree is so thikke charged that it semethe that it wolde breke, and when it is ripe it is all grene as it were ivy berryes; and then men kytten them as men doe the vynes and then they putten it upon an owven and there it waxeth blak and crisp.” This simple description will in some respects answer our purpose at the present time. The leaf of the pepper vine is entire, simple, alternate, without stipules, broad, and fleshy, or oval or heart-shaped. The leaves are arranged in clusters of five to seven in number, opposite the flower stalk, and the flowers, which are glossy-white, are very insignificant in appearance upon a long slender pendulous spadix. They are for the most part uni-sexual, either manœcious or diœcious; that is, the staminate (male flower) and pistillate (female) flowers are separate either upon different branches of the same plant (manœcious) or upon different plants (diœcious). The leaves are four to six inches long, and they partake strongly of the aromatic and peculiar smell and pungent taste of the berry. The small fruit grows loosely on the pendulous fruit stalks or spikes. A single vine will bear from twenty to thirty fruit spikes and each spike contains twenty to forty berries. If they were allowed to ripen, the berries would lose some of their pungency and would gradually fall off. The pepper vine produces two crops annually, the first in December and January, at the time of the first monsoon. The flowers of the second crop appear in March and April, at the time of the little monsoon, and the crop is gathered in July and August. The second crop is inferior both in quality and quantity, probably on account of lack of moisture. The pepper berry is a small, round, sessile, fleshy fruit, which at first appears green, next red, and finally yellow when fully ripe. When one or two berries at the base of the spike begin to turn red the entire spike is pinched off. In gathering the fruit, the natives make use of a small triangular ladder made of bamboo, with which they go around the tree and reach all the fruit as they go. The fruit is put in small baskets slung over the shoulder (see illustrations) of the gatherer. It is then taken by those who work on the ground to a smooth, level spot of clean, hard ground and spread on mats or platforms to dry (mat drying is said to give heavier returns), care being taken to carry it in at night so as to escape the dews. After three days, as the drying proceeds, the berries are removed by rubbing with the hands and are picked clean or winnowed in large round sieves. In some eastern localities mills operated by hand facilitate the work. After the berries have become dry they will shrivel and turn black or chocolate. Those gathered too soon will after being dried become dust. The berries after drying are spherical and about one-fifth of an inch in diameter and are wrinkled on the surface, indistinctly pointed below by the remains of a very short pedical and crowned by three or four lobed stigmas. The thin pericarp tightly encloses a single seed, the embryo of which, on account of the premature gathering is not fully developed and is replaced by the cavity below the apex. The seed itself contains within the thin red-brown testa a shining albumen of angular, radically arranged, large-celled parenchyme, gray and horny without and mealy within. The transverse section of a grain of pepper exhibits a soft, yellowish epidermis covering; the outer pericarp is formed of a closely packed yellow layer of large and most radically arranged thick-walled cells, most of which are colorless and loaded with starch; others contain a soft, yellowish, amorphous mass, each containing in its minute cavity a quantity of dark-brown resin, while the middle layer of the pericarp consists of starch and oil, the shrinkage of which causes the deep wrinkles on the surface of the berry. The next inner layer of the pericarp exhibits its circumference tangentially arranged soft parenchyme, the cells of which possess either spiral striation or spiral fibers, but towards the interior lose parenchyme free from starch and containing very large oil cells. The testa is formed in the first place of a row of small yellowish thick-walled cells, next to which follows the true testa as a dense, dark-brown layer of lignified cells, the individual outlines of which are indistinguishable. If thin slices are kept under glycerine for some time these masses are slowly transformed into needle-shaped crystals of piperine. The angular cells of the interior of the seed are, of course, the more prominent and, when once seen, their characteristic form and contents are easily recognized again. The structure of the outer coats is made out with more difficulty, and before attempting to do so on ground pepper it is best to soften some whole black and white pepper corns in glycerine and cut sections from various parts of the exterior of the berry. White pepper, since it is allowed to ripen fully, has the most distinctness, and, since it lacks the wrinkles, it will not be found difficult to pick out three layers of different cells from a section from it mounted in glycerine, composing the outer coat of the corn, besides angular large cells of the interior which are filled with starch and piperine, the latter being yellow in color. The first of these layers, the outer one, is made of colorless, large, loosely arranged cells with some fibers toward the exterior more compact than those toward the interior of the layer and carrying globules of oil. This layer makes up the principal part of the husk of the white pepper. The second layer is a part of what is generally called the testa and consists of small yellow cells, thick walled and closely oppressed. Next comes the third layer and second portion of the testa, which consists of lignified brown cells, which in their transverse appearance resemble some of the cells of mustard hulls. The individuality of these cells is not made out easily, owing to the thickness of the walls. After the observer has become thoroughly familiar with these appearances of the white pepper he should examine ground pepper, which will be found to differ in the way in which these coats are to be presented; they can be recognized, however, and must be studied until thoroughly understood. The black pepper is not as simple in its arrangement as the white, the maturity of the white giving it distinctness, while the shrunken character of the black berry makes the recognition of its various tissues difficult. In a section from the exterior of a softened black pepper, the interior coats, after what has been learned of the white, will be quickly recognized, but they are not plainly developed. The coats of the outer pericarp, which in the white pepper were wanting, will be found to be darker colored, shrunken and confused, so that it requires much study to discover the forms of the cells, which may be more easily found in the powdered black pepper; there the structure already recognized in the ground white pepper will be seen and in addition dark-brown particles, portions of the outer coats. Careful examinations of different particles will reveal some which consist of the elongated, vertical exterior cells containing resin, while others are the shrunken parenchyme cells of the second layer, whose structure is indistinct. The colored portion of a ground black pepper divides itself into two classes, the dark particles which have just been mentioned and the deep reddish ones which are made up of the testa of the seed and its adherent parenchyme. The two will be readily recognized and distinguished from adulterants by investigation. There are in all about forty different species of pepper plant, consisting of herbs, shrubs, and trees. They are generally named from the city or country of export. The differences in appearance of the product coming from various sources are sufficiently marked to be readily noticed when samples of each are at hand side by side, but otherwise it is almost impossible to distinguish between some of them. The goodness of the pepper depends more on the quality of the soil than on the cultivation, although cultivation will increase the yield. The fine Tellicherry pepper together with the Alleppy are considered the best varieties. Tellicherry is named from the city of Tellicherry of British India, province of Maladar, district of Madras. Alleppy is named from the city of Alleppy, which is the capital of the native state Travancore in the district of Madras. These are closely followed by the Malabar pepper from the district of Malabar, India. These varieties are sun-dried. Next comes the fine Penang pepper, named from the city of Penang, meaning “_betalnut_” (see illustration) in the Straits Settlement. This is followed by the Singapore, named from the city of Singapore, and meaning City of the Lion (see illustration), which is also in the Straits Settlement, and is the largest export city of spice in the world, being the center of export for spices grown in the Malay Peninsula as well as in Java and Sumatra and of that rich state known as Johore, in the southern extremity of the Malay Peninsula. [Illustration: ACHEEN] [Illustration: TELLICHERRY COAST FROM OLD FORT, LOOKING NORTH] Singapore pepper, by reason of its dark color and fairly uniform quality, is a good-looking pepper, and for that reason it is esteemed, but for grinding purposes it has not been heretofore so highly regarded, because of its smoky odor, as it is dried over smoke. The pepper plantation and the gambier plantation of Johore are usually under one management, and in boiling down the gambier to make the vegetable extracts there are suspended over the kettle mats on which are placed quantities of the Singapore pepper.