Chili (chilli, chile) is not a pepper. So what is chili pepper?

Long before there was Red Hot Chili Peppers, the chili was already widely referred to as chili pepper. Chili and pepper, however, are two very different plants. And the story about how the chili came to be known as chili pepper is both amusing and (tongue-in-cheek) amazing.

Chili (alternative spellings are chile and chilli) is native to South America and the Caribbean (if you want trivia within trivia, South America and the Caribbean are both part of what is known as Latin America) where it has been cultivated since pre-historic times. The word “chilli” itself comes from Nahuatl, a language or group of languages spoken by the Nahuan people of Central Mexico.

The pepper or black peppercorn, to be more precise, originally came from Southeast Asia. It reached Europe before the chili did. Called “black gold”, pepper was valued so highly that it was used as currency.

How the chili became chili pepper has everything to do with Christopher Columbus.

Columbus, of course, was the Genoan pirate (uuhhmm, explorer) who, funded by the then mighty Spanish Crown, cris-crossed the Atlantic Ocean four times to establish trade routes. This was the same guy who reached the Americas and, insisting he had reached India, called the American natives “Indians.”

Columbus first encounter with the chili in the Caribbean is considered one of the earliest accounts of European experience of the hot spicy fruit.

Chiles were “discovered” in the Caribbean by Columbus, who appended the word “pepper” (pimiento, in Spanish) because of their fiery similarity to the black peppercorns he was familiar with—although there is no relationship between the two plants, or with Szechuan pepper. [Source]

It was Diego Álvarez Chanca, the doctor in Columbus’ expeditions, that brought the chili to Europe. Unlike the real pepper which required a tropical climate to grow and thrive, the chili was easier to cultivate in Europe and, from there, elsewhere around the world.

As The Nibble correctly observes:

“Chile pepper” is a misnomer, and the term “pepper” is not used in Latin America.

Unfortunately for me, I am one of those people who have been using the term “chili pepper” without caring how terribly incorrect the phrase is and even while knowing that the chili and the pepper are two different plant species. But the nice thing about learning is that mistakes don’t have to be repeated. Henceforth, if I mean chili, I’ll say chili. And if I mean pepper, I’ll say pepper. No more references to the non-existent chili pepper.

Chili peppers have been a part of the human diet in the Americas since at least 7500 BC. There is archaeological evidence at sites located in southwestern Ecuador that chili peppers were domesticated more than 6000 years ago,[7] and were one of the first self-pollinating crops cultivated in Central and South America.[9]

Christopher Columbus was one of the first Europeans to encounter them (in the Caribbean), and called them "peppers" because they, like black and white pepper of the Piper genus known in Europe, have a spicy hot taste unlike other foodstuffs. Upon their introduction into Europe, chilis were grown as botanical curiosities in the gardens of Spanish and Portuguese monasteries. But the monks experimented with the chili culinary potential and discovered that their pungency offered a substitute for black peppercorns, which at the time were so costly that they were used as legal currency in some countries.[10]

Chilies were cultivated around the globe after Columbus.[11][12] Diego Álvarez Chanca, a physician on Columbus' second voyage to the West Indies in 1493, brought the first chili peppers to Spain and first wrote about their medicinal effects in 1494.

The spread of chili peppers to Asia was most likely a natural consequence of its introduction to Portuguese traders (Lisbon was a common port of call for Spanish ships sailing to and from the Americas) who, aware of its trade value, would have likely promoted its commerce in the Asian spice trade routes then dominated by Portuguese and Arab traders.[13]

There is a verifiable correlation between the chili pepper geographical dissemination and consumption in Asia and the presence of Portuguese traders, India and southeast Asia being obvious examples.

The chili pepper features heavily in the cuisine of the Goan region of India, which was the site of a Portuguese colony (e.g., vindaloo, an Indian interpretation of a Portuguese dish). Chili peppers journeyed from India,[14] through Central Asia and Turkey, to Hungary, where it became the national spice in the form of paprika.