Cayenne Pepper

Cayenne Pepper AKA Guinea pepper or Bird pepper. On the Scoville scale, ranging from 0 to 16 million, Cayenne pepper ranks as ”Hot” and has a value of 30 to 50 thousand, noted should be that medium strength. Tabasco has an average Scoville ranking of 2500 SCU.

 

Cayenne pepper is named after the city in French Guiana known as Cayenne, it is a red, hot chili type of pepper used as flavoring in food and for pharmaceutical purposes. In cooking, the fruit is either grounded down to a powder, making Cayenne pepper, in its entirety, this is popular in Sichuan cuisine, or in different vinegar based sauces. The 17th century book called Complete Herbal, written by the English botanist, herbalist, physician and astrologer Nicholas Culpeper mentions Cayenne pepper as an herbal supplement.

 

There has been some dispute over the name of this pepper, since the American Spice Trade Association declared the name a misnomer and would rather call it a red pepper, since generally speaking, any of a number of peppers could be called Cayenne. Capsicum annuum is the most commonly cultivated form of Cayenne and most of the Cayenne spice dealt with in trading is harvested from this type of pepper. The pepper is related to bell peppers, jalapeños, and others, the genus from which the plant is related is called nightshade, or in Latin, Solanaceae.

 

Cayenne is usually grown in a warm climate, thriving in warm, moist and nutrient soil and the plant grows to a heigh of about 2 to 4 feet, while they usually grow better in a tropical and sub-tropical regions, they are also grown commercially in temperate regions of the world. If needed, they can even overwinter if protected from frost and pruned regurarly. To make Cayenne pepper, you dry the fruit and ground or pulp it and then bake the powder into a cake which you then, in turn, ground and sift to make the famous pepper.