PEPPER, PIPER, in Natural History, an aromatic berry of a hot quality, chiefly used in seasoning. We have three kinds of pepper at present used in the shops, the black, the white, and the long pepper.
Black pepper is the fruit of the piper, and is brought from the Dutch settlements in the East Indies. See PIPER, BOTANY Index.
The common white pepper is factitious, being prepared from the black in the following manner: they steep this in sea-water, exposed to the heat of the sun for several days, till the rind or outer bark loosens; they then take it out, and, when it is half dry, rub it till the rind falls off; then they dry the white fruit, and the remains of the rind blow away like chaff. A great deal of the heat of the pepper is taken off by this process, so that the white kind is more fit for many purposes than the black. However, there is a sort of native white pepper produced on a species of the same plant; which is much better than the factitious, and indeed little inferior to the black.
The long pepper is a dried fruit, of an inch or an inch and a half in length, and about the thickness of a large goose quill: it is of a brownish gray colour, cylindrical in figure, and said to be produced on a plant of the same genus.
Pepper is principally used by us in food, to assist digestion: but the people in the East Indies esteem it as a stomachic, and drink a strong infusion of it in water by way of giving them an appetite: they have also a way of making a fiery spirit of fermented fresh pepper with water, which they use for the same purposes. They have also a way of preserving the common and long pepper in vinegar, and eating them afterwards at meals.