Pepper more than spice
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It is still astonishing how such an ordinary peppercorn, which is now turned without thinking through the pepper mill, was once worth almost as much as gold. The history of a spice, Piper nigrum.
Types of pepper in Antiquity
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After much hesitation, the ancient writers manage to distinguish three types of pepper: on the one hand the piper longum (our "Spanish" pepper) which comes from northern India, and on the other hand the black and the white pepper, which are respectively the unripe and the ripe variety of the same piper nigrum (the black pepper of Linnaeus), which grows in the south of India, especially on the coast of Malaba and in Sri Lanka.
Spicy stories
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The ancient writers also like to tell beautiful, sometimes even terrifying legends. Filostratos (3rd century), for example, tells us that high pepper trees grow in the north of India, the top of which is inaccessible to humans. The Indians mark small areas around the trees in which they scatter the pepper harvested at the bottom of the tree as worthless fruit; the monkeys, having watched all this from their high inaccessible position, imitate this work of the Indians at night, pluck the branches thrown around the tree and throw their harvest under the tree. In the morning the Indians collect all the pepper that they have harvested without tiring during their sleep. Regarding the white and the black pepper, Isidore of Seville tells us that dangerous snakes guard the pepper tree forests and that the natives set them on fire when the pepper is ripe, turning the pepper a black color.
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11 minMain dishpeanut oil, tofu stir-fry cubes finely seasoned, stir fry sauce sweet and sour, thick noodles, carrot julienne, beetroot julienne, yellow bell pepper, watercress,rainbow salad with tofu -
45 minMain dishRed cabbage, mild olive oil, quinoa plus, forest outing, lemon, sesame oil, soy sauce less salt, Bio Today tahini white in pot, tap water,grilled red cabbage with quinoa salad -
30 minDessertBrie, Roquefort, port salut, gruyere, Camembert, walnut, garlic, thyme, honey, grape, baguette, Red onion, red grape, raisins, Red wine, Red wine vinegar, Brown sugar,generous cheese plate with onion marmalade -
30 minDessertFull Milk, whipped cream, macaroon, custard powder, vanilla sugar, sugar, protein, amaretto, almond liqueur, basic recipe cooking pears,macaroon pastry with casserole
Medicinal effect of pepper according to Dodoens and Nijlandt
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Dodoens in his Cruydt ^ Boeck writes' Pepper mixes in those sauces gives the food a good taste / and makes people have appetite and those foods digest. Pepper inghen also makes water discharge / and the tends to dissipate those winds and the weedom of the buyck / as well as Laurus leaves oft Comijn. Item it also goet tseghen all poisonous and tseghen all bites and stings of ghastly and ghiftighe ghedierten / and that is also mixed in those Teriacal compositions'.
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Dodoens in his Cruydt ^ Boeck writes' Pepper mixes in those sauces gives the food a good taste / and makes people have appetite and that food is consumed. Pepper inghen also makes water discharge / and the tends to dissipate those winds and the weedom of the buyck / as well as Laurus leaves oft Comijn. Item it also goet tseghen all poisonous and tseghen all bites and stings of ghastly and ghiftighe ghedierten / and that is also mixed in those Teriacal compositions'.