Do Peppercorns Have Anything To Do With Peppers?

Peppers and peppercorns share a name and an ability to lend kick to food. But are there any other similarities between the two? Not really. Botanically speaking, both peppers and peppercorns are considered fruits because they have seeds in their centers and grow from the flower of a plant. But while peppers come from plants in the nightshade family, which includes potatoes and tomatoes, peppercorns spawn from a flowering vine called piper nigrum, which is also (somewhat confusingly) known as the black pepper plant. The name may have originated when visitors to the New World brought chili peppers back to Europe, where they were mistakenly dubbed "peppers" due to the similarity in their spicy tastes.

The edible portions of peppers and peppercorns are also different. We eat the flesh of bell peppers and chili peppers, but the seed is the valuable part of the peppercorn. They're drupes, or stone fruits, like peaches and plums. There's a thin layer of fruit under the wrinkly skin of a peppercorn, which contains most of the piquant bite that people love.

Peppercorns are picked and usually dehydrated before being bottled and sold. The black pepper plant produces three kinds of peppercorns — black, white, and green. There are also two types of pink peppercorns and the Sichuan peppercorn, but all three come from different plants and one of them isn't even a peppercorn per se. Let's dig into the different colors and varieties to determine what sets them apart from each other.

The color of the peppercorn is determined by the length of growing time and processing method. Red peppercorns are left on the plant to mature longer than black peppercorns, while white peppercorns are similar to red ones, but with the outer hull removed (a ten-day process which makes white pepper more expensive than black). In the case of some varieties like green peppercorns, they are pickled or brined to make something resembling a spicy caperberry. 

Pink peppercorns are their own species entirely: Neither originates from piper nigrum, and are actually berries, not true peppercorns. One type comes from the Baies rose plant and has a fruity flavor, while the other, which is also known as a pink berry, is the product of the Peruvian (or Brazilian) pepper tree. It has a menthol-like taste, and can cause allergic reactions in people with tree nut sensitivities.

And the Sichuan peppercorn? It's the berry of a citrus tree, the prickly ash tree. The berries — which also come in two color varieties, red and green — are hand-picked and dried, which causes them to take on a clover or floral shape (unlike real peppercorns, which resemble a pearl or bead). The berries are then processed by hand to remove its inedible seeds. Sichuan peppercorns are a key ingredient in the Sichuan style of Chinese cooking, and produce the numbing sensation you get from a mouthful of kung pao chicken, dan dan noodles, or anything that uses five-spice powder.