Bell Pepper
The bell pepper, also known by its Latin name Capsicum annuum, is a fruit native to Mexico, Central America, and South America and is a staple ingredient in dishes from many cultures, including Andalusian gazpacho. Peppers were first brought to Europe on Christopher Columbus’ return voyage from the Americas. He found several types of peppers in the New World and brought these back to Spain with him, where they became quite popular and were later introduced to the rest of the continent.¹ The pepper received its name from Europeans of the early modern era, who, when they would eat one, would exclaim that it was “hotter than the pepper of the Caucasus,” the table spice they would often use to season their food.² In 1707, Hans Sloane, a British physician and botanist, wrote the Natural History of Jamaica, a natural history catalogue developed as a result of Sloane’s travels to the West Indies as a personal physician to the Governor of Jamaica. An entry within this catalogue is dedicated to the bell pepper and indicates its use in the early modern period.³
Sloane’s catalogue entry refers to the bell pepper as a plant used for sustenance and for medicinal purposes. He states that the fruit’s seeds should not be eaten at all as they have “something venomous and malignant in them."⁴ Because Sloane’s knowledge of the bell pepper stems from his observation of its use by the residents of Jamaica, this could indicate that perhaps the Jamaicans noticed the bitter taste of the seeds and assumed they could be harmful to digest. Sloane notes that the Jamaicans have other issues with the pepper’s spicy qualities when he states that putting the peppers on coals and inhaling the fumes elicits a “troublesome cough, not to be remedied but by a handkerchief wet with vinegar."⁵ While the bell pepper perhaps produced some unfavorable side effects, the Jamaican indigenous peoples and slaves used it largely to cure illness. Specifically, Sloane states that it was utilized as a “proper corrective for all sorts of Legumina, and sallers, and [the natives and slaves] will scarce abstain from it in hot diseases."⁶ As legumina and sallers are both words for beef products, Sloane perhaps could be referencing some type of food poisoning associated with both products. “Hot diseases,” while also not explained in greater detail, could refer to any illnesses that produce a fever. This suggests that bell peppers were used in a plethora of ways medicinally and that the fruit was probably necessary in the homes of many Jamaicans to treat common maladies.
In addition to eating peppers raw and utilizing them for medicinal purposes, the people of Jamaica also pickled peppers. Sloane even provides a guide to pickling a bell pepper: “...[cut] off the largest part next the stalk, and [clear] it of its seed, and [put] it into pickle of vinegar and salt."⁷ This variation on eating the pepper shows that the people of Jamaica, the natives and slaves especially, were knowledgeable of the preservative qualities of the pepper and possibly ate it year-round. The bell pepper’s popularity is reiterated several times in Sloane’s entry as he says that it is “used all over Spain for pepper” and that it is “the most commonly planted of any of the Capsicums,” suggesting that bell peppers specifically had the most useful qualities of any peppers in Jamaica or perhaps that the plants were best able to survive in the island’s climate.⁸ Sloane’s catalogue entry for bell pepper displays its eminence in the New World and identifies its significance in the early modern era.⁹
The pepper’s prevalence can also be seen in the art of the early modern era. Because hot peppers were grown more commonly in the Americas, artwork of the time focuses on the hot pepper rather than the bell pepper as we know it today. In Folios 21v-22r of Histoire Naturelle des Indes, or the Drake Manuscript, one of the work’s unknown artists created this illuminated manuscript page depicting three different types of peppers, known as “hagis” to the natives of the region, found in the West Indies in the late sixteenth century.¹⁰ On the upper half of Folio 22r, the three plants sit atop a paragraph written in French that describes the importance of the pepper in the lives of the natives of the West Indies. Much like Hans Sloane, this writer tells of the uses of the pepper as a source of food but also relates its ability to act as a natural water conserver for the body: “The Indians mash this pepper with salt and put it in the husk of millet and when they go far away where they cannot find fresh water to drink, they eat as much as possible of this pepper en route and are not thirsty, feeling always fresh in spite of the very intense heat and their being nude.”¹¹ This paragraph demonstrates the relationship between the natives of the West Indies and the pepper plant and even shows the importance of the peppers in every day activities, like traveling.
The three pepper plants are organized on the page in the shape of an inverted triangle with the red pepper in the top left corner of the page, the yellow pepper in the top right corner, and the green pepper centered below the first two. The red pepper plant, labeled as “Hagis Roges,” appears to be more laden with peppers than the other two plants. Its five branches (one branch shooting vertically out of a small mound of earth with two branches on either side) hold teardrop-shaped red peppers and green leaves in alternating order. The peppers, leaves, and branches are in such close proximity to each other that the plant takes on a bush-like form. The yellow pepper plant, labeled “Hagis Ianne,” is smaller than the red pepper plant and has only three branches, which could indicate that the yellow pepper is perhaps the least popular or least suited to the climate of the three types of peppers. However, the size and shape of the peppers and leaves remain the same for this plant. The green pepper plant, labeled “Hagis Vert,” has five branches like the red pepper plant, but its peppers are much smaller than the peppers on either the red or yellow pepper plants. The smaller size of the green peppers could be attributed to the artist’s attempt to differentiate the peppers from the leaves on the plant since both are green in color or perhaps that the plant just produces smaller peppers than the other two plants. This image from the Drake Manuscript serves to show the importance of the bell pepper in the lives of the natives of the West Indies and also reflects the interests of early modern Europeans. Coupled with Hans Sloane's entry on the bell pepper, it effectively gives the modern reader a look into the prevelance of the pepper in the early modern era.
--by Olivia Walseth
¹Alicia E. Dill, "Bell Pepper," Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, November 11, 2014, http://fns.dpi.wi.gov/sites/default/files/imce/fns/pdf/ffvp_fs_bp.pdf.
²National Gardening Association Editors, "A Brief History of Peppers," National Gardening Association, November 11, 2014, http://www.garden.org/foodguide/browse/veggie/eggplant_getting_started/506.
³Stanley Hawkins, "Sir Hans Sloane (1660–1735): His Life And Legacy," The Ulster Medical Journal 79 (1): 25, 2010, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2938984/.
⁴Hans Sloane, Michael van der Gucht, and John Savage, A Voyage To The Islands Madera, Barbados, Nieves, S. Christophers And Jamaica, With The Natural History ... Of The Last Of Those Islands, (London: Printed by B. M. for the author, 1707), 241.
⁵Ibid.
⁶Ibid.
⁷Ibid.
⁸Ibid.
⁹While Sloane specifically titles his entry on this pepper as the "Bell Pepper," an examination of the evidence presented within the entry suggests that it is actually a version of the hot pepper. The cough produced by putting the pepper over a fire hints at this as does his fear of the seeds. While the pepper Sloane obsevered may have been bell-shaped, it is highly unlikely that it is the sweet bell pepper we know today.
¹⁰"Folios 21v–22r," Histoire Naturelle Des Indes, The Pierpont Morgan Library & Museum, November 11, 2014, http://www.themorgan.org/collection/Histoire-Naturelle-des-Indes/22.
¹¹Ibid.