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Pep′per-box.

A small box or caster for dredging pepper on to meat or other food.

Black-pepper is a vine with a knotty stem, which unpruned will reach the hight of 30 feet, but on Singapore Island, and probably elsewhere, is trained on poles of about 12 feet high, which are grasped by the tendrils of the vine. The branches are brittle; the leaves deep green, heart-shaped, and abundant; the blossom a cluster of small, white, almost odorless flowers. The fruit hangs in clusters of 40 or 50 grains in a bunch. At full size it is green, red at maturity, black after being picked, and then shriveled by drying on mats in the sun.

White-pepper is macerated in water until the black cuticle can be rubbed off and the grains again dried in the sun.

Pliny says that pepper was brought from India; “and what was he, gladly would I know, that ventured first to bite of pepper and use it in his meats? Who might he be that, to provoke his appetite and find himself a good stomach, could not make a shift with fasting and hunger only?” Capsicum (red-pepper) appears to have been unknown to the ancients. It is probably a West India production.

1877.

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