putraperkasa: Black
pepper (Piper
nigrum) is a flowering vine in
the family Piperaceae,
cultivated for its fruit, known as a peppercorn,
which is usually dried and used as a spice and seasoning. When fresh and fully mature, the
fruit is about 5 mm (0.20 in) in diameter and dark red, and contains
a single seed, like all drupes.
Peppercorns and the ground pepper derived from them may be described simply
as pepper, or more precisely as black pepper (cooked
and dried unripe fruit), green pepper (dried unripe fruit),
or white pepper (ripe fruit seeds).
Black pepper
is native to present-day South India, and is extensively
cultivated there and elsewhere in tropical regions. Producing 36% of the
world total in 2018, Vietnam is the
largest producer and exporter of pepper.
Ground, dried
and cooked peppercorns have been used since antiquity, both for flavour and as
a traditional
medicine. Black pepper is the world's most traded spice,
and is one of the most common spices added to cuisines around the world. Its
spiciness is due to the chemical compound piperine, which is a different kind of
spicy from the capsaicin characteristic
of chili peppers.
It is ubiquitous in the modern world as a seasoning, and is often paired with salt and
available on dining tables in shakers or mills.
Black
pepper is produced from the still-green, unripe drupe of
the pepper plant.The drupes are cooked
briefly in hot water, both to clean them and to prepare them for drying. The
heat ruptures cell walls in
the pepper, speeding the work of browning enzymes during drying. The drupes dry
in the sun or by machine for several days, during which the pepper skin around
the seed shrinks and darkens into a thin, wrinkled black layer. Once dry, the
spice is called black peppercorn. On some estates, the berries are separated
from the stem by hand and then sun-dried without the boiling process.
Once the
peppercorns are dried, pepper spirit and oil can be extracted from the berries
by crushing them. Pepper spirit is used in many medicinal and beauty products.
Pepper oil is also used as an ayurvedic massage oil and in certain
beauty and herbal treatments.
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