How the Chili Pepper Conquered China

https://www.sixthtone.com/news/1007963/how-the-chili-pepper-conquered-china

by tosh • 4 years ago

70 18 4 years ago

hunglee2• 4 years ago

similar to how tomato conquered Italy, potato conquered Northern europe, dietary stapes which have a much more recent, counterintuitive history than we usually believe!

riffraff• 4 years ago

My favorite is maize, which was adopted in Europe as a staple food but without the means used by Americans to use it properly, so peasants in Europe got pellagra, which in the Americas was never an issue.

ahmadmijot• 4 years ago

I thought that chilli pepper is part of Sichuan culture back in the Three Kingdoms era but I'm surprised on how recent chilli pepper in their cuisine!

dwringer• 4 years ago

I was reading about this the other day and was surprised to learn that traditionally Sichuan cuisine used Sichuan peppercorns which are unrelated to either black pepper or new world peppers, and evidently have a somewhat different mechanism of action that is still being studied. I've never tried it but it's allegedly similar to the feeling of a 9 volt battery or carbonated drink [0].

[0]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sichuan_pepper

GordonS• 4 years ago

I cook a lot of Chinese food, and I've had food in Sichuan province before too - so I eat plenty Sichuan peppercorns and oil (aka "prickly oil").

It doesn't taste or feel anything like a battery, but it is quite unique!

It has a peppy citrus flavour, but also kind of numbs your whole mouth - it might sound odd, but it's really nice when combined with other ingredients.

You should be able to get peppercorns or oil from your nearest Asian store if you want to try it for yourself.

nibbleshifter• 4 years ago

Can confirm its similar to licking a battery.

A few places I've been to lately use it in cocktails, very interesting flavour.

There's also a Brazilian herb/flower with similar properties that is becoming popular in gastronomy.

klyrs• 4 years ago

Favorite science factoid: the buzzing sensation is a fairly reliable 50Hz!

https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2013.168...

Markoff2• 4 years ago

It makes your lips literally buzz [1] (if it's good quality sichuanese peppercorn (huajiao)), I remember reading study while I lived in China that it literally cause movement. Licking battery is petty much salty and you can feel something in your lips, but nothing close to real buzz caused by huajiao.

They are not really spicy, but they create this nice buzz and have very nice smell, for spiciness they need to be combined with chilli peppers (see the most famous Chinese dish - gongbao jiding (incorrectly called kungpao chicken) - chicken dices with chilli, huajiao, spring onion and nuts).

[1] https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2013.168...

em500• 4 years ago

Note that Sichuan pepper is unrelated to chili pepper.

StevePerkins• 4 years ago

If you find this sort of thing interesting, then strong recommendation for "1493", by Charles C. Mann.

A reference to 1492, the year that Columbus landed in the Western Hemisphere, this book is all about the Columbian Exchange. The effects of plant, animal, and microbial species suddenly flowing all throughout a world that until that moment had quite separate and isolated biospheres.

bitcurious• 4 years ago

If a spicy sundae sounds tasty to you, I highly recommend trying a mangonada - perfect summer drink.

contingencies3• 4 years ago

Things Chinese consume all the time that they typically don't know came from somewhere else: baozi (came with the Mongols from Ottoman cuisine), chicken (first domesticated in the Brahmaputra/Bengal/Myanmar region), chilli, corn, peanuts, tea (SEA border of Yunnan, very un-Chinese until recently), tomato. The source(s) of initial rice domestication are still unclear, but much of China (north and central China) did not eat rice as a daily staple for a significant part of Chinese history.

Markoff2• 4 years ago

Reverse list would be also interesting, I'm sure most of the world including Chinese dunno kiwi fruit is from China.

contingencies3• 4 years ago

The big one in that list is citrus, which IIRC hails from Guangdong. The Berbers brought citrus to Europe via trading from Persia. The Persians acquired it from China, probably via South Asian seafaring or the Silk Road.

jimmydef2• 4 years ago

One theory is that churros came from the fried Chinese doughstick youtiao.

The habit of eating raw fish in Japan probably developed indigenously but many of the words the Japanese use to describe sushi and raw fish came from China which to the surprise of many has a very strong food culture of eating raw fish and meat up till the Ming dynasty in the 14th century.

Look at what confucius wrote in the book of rites 2500 years ago: 食不厌精，脍不厌细 (you'll not get sick of good food, and you'll not get sick of kuai(raw fish /meat) that is sliced thinly.) or 脍，春用葱，秋用芥 (kuai, eat it with spring onions in spring and jie in autumn. jie is a chinese mustard. )

The chinese probably adopted the habit of eating raw fish in the past from people from southeast asia.

And while sashima is almost certainly developed indigenously in Japan, the predecessor of the modern Sushi in japan (fish preserved in rice) is most likely developed in China.

Food history is so interesting but largley neglected.

jimmydef2• 4 years ago

Baozi is unlikely to have come from the Ottomans via the Mongols.

The Song dynasty chinese were already eating baozi and writing about it in their books and documents in the early 11th century, before the Ottomans were established or Genghis Khan was born.

And Baozi is just another name for Mantou in ancient China which is a name for the food which is even older stretching back to the Han dynasty over two millenia ago.

contingencies3• 4 years ago

OK, maybe you are right but {{citation-needed}}. It seems Wikipedia asserts Song but has no references. As they are sequential the big picture is still similar. Song was very multicultural/pluralistic, even if thry appeared in the Song this virtually supports an import hypothesis.

beaunative• 4 years ago

Propaganda shouldn’t be the excuse for an echo chamber. It’s not much better one or the other anyway

How the Chili Pepper Conquered China

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