CAYENNE PEPPER, Guinea Pepper, Spanish Pepper, Chilly, a preparation from the dried fruit of various species of Capsicum, a genus of the Natural Order Solanaceoe, to which belong also the potato, tomato, and bittersweet. The true peppers are members of a totally distinct order, the Piperaceoe. The fruits of plants of the genus Capsicum have all a strong pungent flavour. The capsicums bear a greenish-white or violaceous flower, with a wheel-shaped corolla, five anthers (connivent and dehiscing lengthwise), and an obtuse stigma. The ovary becomes a pod, consisting of an envelope at first fleshy and afterwards leathery, within which are the spongy pulp and several seeds. The leaves are entire, and alternate, or in pairs near one another; the peduncles are extra-axillary. There are many kinds of capsicums, ranked by botanists either as distinct species or as varieties. Don, in his General System of Gardening and Botany, gives a list of thirty-three species. They are chiefly natives of Brazil, the West and East Indies, and China. They are now grown in various parts of the world, both for the sake of the fruit and for ornament. In England the annual sorts are sown from March to the middle of April, under a frame. They can be planted out when 2 or 3 inches high, and in June may be transferred to a light rich soil in the open garden. They flower in July or August, and produce pods from August till the end of September. The perennial and shrubby kinds may be wintered in a conservatory. Several species or varieties are used to make Cayenne pepper. The annual or common capsicum (C. annuum), the Guinea Pepper plant, was brought to Europe by the Spaniards, and was grown in England in 1548. It is indigenous to South America, but is now cultivated in India, Hungary, Italy, Spain, and ...Turkey, with the other species of capsicum. It is a hardy herbaceous plant, which attains a height of 2 or 3 feet, and bears a pod usually of an ovate shape, and yellow, red, or black in colour. The Spur or Goat Pepper (C. frutescens) has been an inmate of English gardens since 1656. It is a dwarf shrub, a native of the East Indies, which produces a small pod, having very pungent properties. C. tetragonurn, or Bonnet Pepper, is a species much esteemed in Jamaica; it bears very fleshy fruits. Other well-known kinds of capsicum are the Cherry Pepper (C. cerasiforme) ; Bell Pepper (C. grossum), which has thick and pulpy fruit, well adapted for pickling; and Berry or Bird Pepper (C γ . baccatum). The last mentioned has been grown in England since 1731; its fruit is globular, and about the size of a cherry. The West Indian stomachic Man-dram is prepared by mashing a few pods of bird pepper and mixing them with sliced cucumber and shallots, to which have been added a little lime-juice and Madeira wine. Chillies, the dried ripe or unripe fruit of capsicums, are used to make chilly-vinegar, as well as for pickles. Cayenne pepper is manufactured from the ripe fruits, which are dried, ground, mixed with wheat flour, and made into cakes with yeast; the cakes are baked till hard like biscuit, and then ground and sifted. The pepper is sometimes prepared by simply drying the pods and pounding them fine in a mortar. Cayenne pepper is occasionally adulterated with red lead, vermilion, ochre, salt, ground-rice, and turmeric. The taste of the pepper is impaired by exposure to damp and the heat of the sun. Chillies have been in use from time immemorial; they are eaten in great quantity by the people of Guiana and other warm countries, and in Europe are largely consumed both as a spice and as medicine. Their hot and biting taste is due to the presence of the alkaloid Capsicine, a reddish body, having a balsamic and extremely acrid and irritating odour. The Cayenne pepper plants, with the rest of the Solanaceae, have not the narcotic properties of the genera of the most nearly allied order Atropaceae, unless, as has been affirmed, these are resident in the pulp of certain species of capsicums. Medicinally, Cayenne pepper is used with cinchona in lethargic affections, also in atonic gout accompanied by flatulence, and in tympanites and paralysis. It is employed as a stimulant in those forms of dyspepsia which are due to faulty chymification and defective secretion of gastric juice. In malignant scarlatina it is used either in the form of a tincture or as a gargle. To make the tincture, a pint of vinegar is boiled with two tablespoonfuls of powdered chillies and a teaspoonful of salt, and then strained. Cayenne pepper taken in large quantities acts as an irritant poison. A dose of powdered capsicum is from 1 to 5 grs., and of the tincture from 5 to 15 drops.
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