The new paper Monograph of wild and cultivated chili peppers (Capsicum L., Solanaceae) (PhytoKeys 200: 1-423), by Gloria E. Barboza, Carolina Carrizo García, Luciano de Bem Bianchetti, María V. Romero, and Marisel Scaldaferro, is focused on plant taxonomy rather than linguistics, but (aside from the fact that various Hatters enjoy talking biology) it has all sorts of interesting vocabulary. From the abstract:
We recognise 43 species and five varieties, including C. mirum Barboza, sp. nov. from São Paulo State, Brazil and a new combination C. muticum (Sendtn.) Barboza, comb. nov.; five of these taxa are cultivated worldwide (C. annuum L. var. annuum, C. baccatum L. var. pendulum (Willd.) Eshbaugh, C. baccatum L. var. umbilicatum (Vell.) Hunz. & Barboza, C. chinense Jacq. and C. frutescens L.). Nomenclatural revision of the 265 names attributed to chili peppers resulted in 89 new lectotypifications and five new neotypifications. Identification keys and detailed descriptions, maps and illustrations for all taxa are provided.
Words like “lectotypifications” and “neotypifications” make me gape in wonderment. Check out these clade names: Andean, Caatinga, Flexuosum, Bolivian, Longidentatum, Atlantic Forest, Purple Corolla, Pubescens, Tovarii, Baccatum, and Annuum. And there is in fact an etymological excursus:
The word ‘capsicum’ was coined in the pre-Linnaean literature for the first time by Matthias de L’Obel (1576: 173) for the “Piper indicum longioribus siliquis”. […] Pre-Linnaean botanists (e.g. Dodoens 1554, 1583; Clusius 1611; Bauhin 1623; Parkinson 1640; Morison 1669) proposed many polynomials for the peppers emphasising the variable fruit characters (colour, shape, size, position or pungency). Joseph Pitton de Tournefort (1719), in his influential work Institutiones, used the name Capsicum, gave an original description for the genus and listed 27 polynomial species that corresponded to his concept of the genus. He also mentioned the etymology of the word Capsicum, either from the Greek word δάγκωμα (= to bite), on account of the burning strength of the seeds or from the Latin voice capsa (= box), on account of the boxy shape of the cultivated fruits.
That seems to be still the preferred suggestion; AHD: “New Latin Capsicum, genus name, perhaps from Latin capsa, box (from its podlike fruit).”
‘He also mentioned the etymology of the word Capsicum, either from the Greek word δάγκωμα (= to bite)…’
Er, what?
Garbled transcription and translation by the botanists. Tournefort’s Latin actually reads:
LSJ says κάπτω is ‘gulp down’ rather than ‘bite’ (Tournefort was probably straining for an etymology there); and the botanists oddly translated voce correctly the first time as ‘word’, but incorrectly the second time as ‘voice’.
I wonder if one of the authors knows Greek and accidentally put in the actual Greek for ‘bite’? Wiktionary says δαγκώνω is Modern Greek for ‘I bite’.
Named species are defined as “everything that belongs to the same species as the type specimen(s) that bear(s) that name”. Ideally, the type is one individual (or part thereof); that’s a holotype. In ancient times ( = up to a few decades ago), people didn’t worry about that and declared a whole collection of specimens, often from different individuals, to be syntypes. If it turns out that syntypes belong to separate species or at least can’t be guaranteed to belong to a single species, one of them is chosen as the lectotype (which then functions like a holotype), and the others lose their type status.
If all types are lost or found to be undiagnostic, a new one is designated; that’s a neotype (and functions like a holotype).
If a holotype is lost and a neotype is designated, and then the holotype shows up again, the neotype loses its type status and the holotype is reinstated. This kind of thing makes it important not to lose any of the history, and that’s why all these different designations exist.
I suspect they used Google Translate.
The “capsule” nature of peppers is pretty unusual among fruit. Most fruits don’t have large air pockets inside them.
I see that Modern Greek also has κάψα ‘great heat, intense desire’ and related words, from καίω ‘to burn’. They’re not in LSJ, but I bet they were around at least five or six hundred ago.
LSJ also furnishes one example of καψικός ‘like a box’, obviously from Latin, and there are a few other examples in later Greek of other words ultimately from ‘capsa’. I wonder if the word was too rare for Matthias de L’Obel or whoever to have come across it…but for all I know it may have been more common in later Greek.
[EDIT: Matthias de L’Obel -oh, that’s where the name ‘Lobelia’ comes from.]
Most fruits don’t have large air pockets inside them.
Now I’m wondering how the air ‘gets in there’. Presumably the pods start small and grow(?) How do they inflate/suck air in as they grow?
Polyglot Vegetarian, as always, is the master: his 2007 post on Chili traces the transmission of “chili”, “pepper”, and “capsicum” into European languages and observes a couple of things that Barboza et al. missed: L’Obel (1576) was not the first writer to use the word “capsicum” for the New World genus, it was used previously by Dodoens (1554), and possibly by Fuchs as well in unpublished revisions. And Dodoens was not coining the word, he credited it to Joannes Actuarius, a Byzantine physician — but Actuarius was a couple of centuries before Columbus, so what was he talking about?
Fortunately, Merriam-Webster has about as much of an answer as is possible, in a detailed update on the history of “capsicum”:
Whew! So “capsicum” (like “pumpkin”) was an Old World word, transferred to the American species and not originally coined to describe them, though apparently their hollow shape helped the name stick. Three cheers for Merriam-Webster online; this would never have gotten into a print dictionary at this length.
@AntC: This Stack Exchange question and answer suggest that the gas inside is similar to the external air, but it has a lot more of some of the gasses you would expect to see produced by plant metabolism, including plenty of carbon dioxide. The high CO₂ indicates that it is not in easy equilibrium with the outside atmosphere. The problem has also been raised on Reddit; the answer says that the gas diffuses through the flesh and skin of the peppers, which sounds like the most likely explanation. So there is gas exchange, but it is via slow diffusion and continued production of CO₂ maintains a concentration difference with the outside.
Three cheers for Merriam-Webster online; this would never have gotten into a print dictionary at this length.
Amen, and thanks for finding that.
I’ve always wondered what southern Asian cuisines were like before capsicum.
Re: Y’s comment— for me the much bigger question is what did we ( Indians) used to eat before tomatoes and potatoes!
Thanks @Brett.
@Y and @Neil Southern Asian/what did we ( Indians) used to eat before tomatoes and potatoes!
Yes I’ve often wondered that about Indian cuisine. And how was Italian cuisine without tomatoes? There were plenty of already known spices — Colombus was trying to sail around the world to the ‘Spice Islands’ (now part of Indonesia).
Spices were chiefly used as a preservative, in a world without refrigeration. Setting fire to your lips is a bonus.
For comparison, Cardamoms (especially the big black ones I can find only at Indian stores) are hollow inside. Sez the wiki:
So both Old and New worlds.
Spices were chiefly used as a preservative, in a world without refrigeration.
My impression is that this is largely a myth. E.g., from Quora:
Tomatoes and potatoes are not exactly cornerstones of Indian cooking as it is presented in restaurants here. A lot of dishes have a dash of chili and tomato paste, but with ginger and turmeric and garlic and so on I don’t think you would miss it. And potato dishes are usually served with rice as the carbohydrate staple… But I’m just guessing; my google fu brings me pages about Indian food 5000 years ago, not 500, sad, and it probably depends on where in India you are.
But have this:
Anecdata: The hottest dish I’ve ever been served was a black pepper soup in a Nigerian restaurant in London. Nothing transatlantic in that. This was before Scoville numbers were memetic so I don’t know what kind of self abuse my chili-eating friends perpetrated, though.
As others have pointed, some herbs and spices have qualities that might be useful in preservation. But using enough—say mustard, as one example—to preserve food would render it inedible. That, and the fact that gathering enough mustard from the wild to preserve your entire meat harvest for the winter is wildly impractical when salt and fires are readily available.
You can use turmeric to hide long-in-the-tooth meat behind the doors of perception. I’ve had a turmeric-intensive rogan josh curry sauce (comes in a bag) from an Indian store, but the link shows none being used.
As to chilis being brought to India by the Portuguese – does anyone know whether Portuguese cooking today uses them a lot ? India has certainly done a service to humanity (just behind Mexico). On the other hand, I have read a few times that Europeans/Brexiteers/Americans tend to overdo the chilis.
Oh well, what do I in Germany know about “real” Indian cooking. I just go by smell and taste.
WP has an entry on Early Indian cookbooks. Of the Ayurvedic Samhitas (4th c. BCE), it says,
.
I have definitely seen eighteenth-century cookery books that recommend ways of using strong spices (never herbs, so far as I can remember, always ground spices) to combat increasing “off” flavors in meat.
Most of these don’t grow wild in most of Europe.
Garlic is seriously antibacterial (wide dead zone around it in the petri dish), but that seems to be the grain of truth in the myth.
To actually stop the decay, or just to cover up the stench as long as that’s still possible?
@David Marjanović: They didn’t generally say which one was intended, but I inferred it was mostly the latter, just covering it up. In any case, people in the eighteenth century (and earlier) did not necessarily have a completely clear understanding of the distinction between the two.
Good point.
And how was Italian cuisine without tomatoes?
Pasta was served either in broth or with butter and cheese, at times with the addition of spices and sugar, in the Renaissance; a little later on, people might add gravy from a roast or a stew. But then again, pasta was nowhere near as common back then. Soups were much more important in the average diet, and from the mid-seventeenth century to the mid-nineteenth century, rich people were mainly eating French-influenced cuisine. Tomatoes first got a foothold in eighteenth-century Naples, given the connection to Spain (where they were accepted much sooner), and took a while to spread to the rest of the peninsula. The first recorded pairing with pasta, in 1790, was in a brothy soup “alla catalana.”
@Hat My impression is that this is largely a myth. E.g., from Quora:
No references given in those Quora pieces. Not that I have contrary references, but I call ‘unproven’.
I have various Indian pickles in the cupboard. Despite the label saying “Refrigerate after opening”, I don’t/never have; and they’re fine even after several months. (And of course before opening they’re not refrigerated.)
If spices from the Orient were merely for bragging rights, why would anybody pay so much for them? To the extent Columbus thought it worth sailing the wrong way round the world to find another trade route?
‘Preserve’: “From early 15c. as “maintain, keep in a certain quality, state or condition.” Of fruit, etc., “prevent from spoiling by use of preservative substances,”” [etymonline]
That article goes on to mention “fruit preserved with sugar” — but that would be with sugarcane from that same Orient(?) Check: one of The East India Company’s main commodities was sugar [wp] also spices and … salt huh? Why transport salt (presumably dried) across a salty sea — where it would only get damp — to an Island surrounded by salty sea? (Evidence of early Neolithic salt pans in Britain.[wp])
You can preserve (pickle) fish and vegetables in vinegar — these days people add sugar to the liquid as well to make the taste acceptable (to modern palates) but it’s still the vinegar doing the preservation. Maybe in the old days, you’d draw out the vinegar with water before eating as you do with salt-preserved meat and fish, or just learn to like it. (Vinegar can be produced at home, there were salt mines in Jutland).
In Denmark, sugar from sugar beets replaced West Indian sugar from the 1880s, before that the beets were not a cash crop. Honey was available since forever, of course.
I don’t know if you can reduce sweet fruits by boiling to get the sugar content high enough for preservation, even without adding sugar, or if people just ate them in season. They can be dried, too (cf raisins), as can mushrooms (and stockfish), or made into beer.
All this just to say that I find it likely that the high value of East Indian spices was based in conspicuous consumption rather than utility. Also there’s a reason why meat is called “gamey” when it’s overdue for consumption: Especially wild fowl would be “matured” by hanging outside the merchant’s shop for weeks, I remember the smell from when I were a lad. I never partook so I don’t know if you hid the taste with a sharp sauce (like in Snow White). Horseradish would serve.
The history of sushi (すし、寿司、鮨, pronounced [sɯɕiꜜ] or [sɯꜜɕi]) began with paddy fields, where fish was fermented with vinegar, salt and rice, after which the rice was discarded. The earliest form of the dish, today referred to as narezushi, was created in Japan around the Yayoi period (early Neolithic–early Iron Age).
[…]
The earliest form of sushi, a dish today known as narezushi, has its probable origin with the Baiyue and paddy fields of ancient southern China. The prototypical narezushi is made by lacto-fermenting fish with salt and rice in order to control putrefaction.[1] In Japan the dish’s distribution overlaps with the introduction of wet-field rice cultivation during the Yayoi period.[1][7] Passages relate ancient Japanese people with legendary King Shao Kang ruling over the Yangtze delta.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_sushi
I have various Indian pickles in the cupboard. Despite the label saying “Refrigerate after opening”, I don’t/never have; and they’re fine even after several months.
Industrial pickles may have a touch of sodium benzoate or something like that, but even without, they’re preserved by the acidity and salt, as well as the sugar, and the oil covering the top (it’s a good idea to make sure the pickle itself is always below the surface). Certain spices do indeed have a preservative effect – garlic, black pepper, mustard, and cumin, for instance – but that’s never a factor that can rival salt and pH.
Certain spices do indeed have a preservative effect …
When I said “No references given in those Quora pieces. “, it turns out there were a few. And since our topic is ‘Capsicum’: Antimicrobial and Anti-Virulence Activity of Capsaicin Against Erythromycin-Resistant, Cell-Invasive Group A Streptococci — Capsaicin being “a chemical irritant for mammals, including humans, … present in large quantities … in the genus Capsicum.” [wp]
Especially wild fowl would be “matured” by hanging outside the merchant’s shop for weeks
Both meat and poultry are still hung (and allowed to grow moldy), it’s just that this is now done in a warehouse out of public view and the mold is cut off before it is sold. Beef being dry-aged. Unhung meat would be too tough to eat.
In one of Larry Niven’s novels, Louis Wu serves steak and (dressed) salad to his hominin guests, but it turns out that while they are omnivores, they don’t eat decomposing food.