Pepper

January 1, 2019
People today take pepper for granted. Every restaurant has a pepper shaker topping the table. Those paper packets in the bottom of a fast-food takeout sack often get thrown away, and those diners who do break them open find barely a ghost of flavor. Nevertheless, pepper has an ancient history as one of the first items traded extensively in international commerce. Europeans hungered for pepper to add piquancy to their mundane cuisine and thus provoked the imperial expansion that transformed the globe. Author Barth has traveled to pepper's homeland, in the south of India, where he saw firsthand how growers produce those coveted tiny black orbs. Moving beyond the mere production of pepper and exploring the economics of the pepper trade, Barth finds that, as is so often the case, the producer realizes less benefit than the many merchants who are middlemen in pepper's route to the table. He also delves into pepper's medical and cosmetic uses. A few recipes appear for dishes where pepper dominates.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)