Collection: Our false peppers

We use the term pepper or real pepper for plants from the genus Piper from the Piperaceae family and plants from the genus Capsicum from the Solanaceae family, the latter better known as chili pepper. peppersPseudo or false pepper ('faux poivre' in French) is the term we use for all spices from plants that do not belong to these two families but are used for their pungency in the same sort of way.

In various countries, such pseudopeppers peppers are the standard, as in Japan, where black pepper and chili pepper lose out to Szechuan pepper, generaly sansho pepper. In Europe, some of the traditionaly used pseudo peppers arepeppers completely forgotten, like grains of paradise and selim. In Africa, where these originate, they are less and less used, replaced by the Asian black pepper and long pepper, even the native African (Cape) long pepper, a real pepper.

The differences between the botanically different peppers peppers concern both the degree of spiciness and the taste. As for the spiciness, only plants from the Piperaceae family contain the pungent substance piperine. Pseudo pepperspeppers stimulate our acuity receptors in very diverse ways. Such as with sanshool, the stimulating substance in the peppers peppersfrom the Zanthoxylum genus (the Szechuanpeppers), which numbs the tongue.

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