HOT HISTORY

Across continents and cuisines, there are few places untouched by chilli's lovely heat. NADIA BAILEY delves into its origins.

- NADIA BAILEY

Serrano. Guajillo. Manzano. For every palate, a chilli: from the mild crunch of a banana pepper to the peppery kick of the cayenne, from the sweetness of friggitelli to the prickling heat of the birdseye. Across almost every country and culture, chilli proliferates – by some estimates, there are more than 50,000 Capsicum cultivars grown worldwide. It inspires devotion, obsession and for some, a never-ending quest for an ever-hotter fix. But where did it all begin?

In what’s now known as Bolivia and Mexico, the Indigenous people first foraged chillies where they grew in the wild. As early as 4000 BC, they were cultivated for culinary use. Aztec plant growers developed dozens of annuum species; from there, they passed to other Mesoamerican and Native American cultures, then to those in the Caribbean. Of about 25 species of the genus Capsicum that existed, five became domesticated across different areas: annuum in Mexico, chinense in Amazonia, frutescens in southern Central America, baccatum in Bolivia, Ecuador, Peru and Chile, and pubescens in the Andes. In gardens, on trade routes, in ritual practices and folklore, the chilli flourished.

The cultivation of chilli in the rest of the world has, by comparison, a fairly short history – barely more than 500 years. The plant was unknown outside of the Americas until Christopher Columbus brought them to Iberia in the early 1500s – when chillies (along with tomatoes, potatoes, cocoa and more) first reached foreign palates. Following Columbus, Portuguese traders carried chillies to settlements and colonies in West Africa, in India and across East Asia.