The power of pepper

Hello. This is 6 Minute English from BBC Learning English. I'm Neil.

And I'm Becca.

In this episode, we're discussing a food seasoning that's so popular we eat around three quarters of a million tonnes of it a year. We're talking about pepper. Do you add pepper to your food, Becca?

I do, Neil, yes. I think it's an easy way to add some spice.

Yeah, I love a bit of pepper. I grind pepper onto everything. Well... not everything! But I do like it. Given its popularity, it's surprising that most people know very little about pepper. Did you know, for example, that peppers are the fruit of vines often growing over ten metres high?

Our ancestors would be surprised how little we know. From ancient Greece onwards, pepper was prized as the black gold of ingredients, and explorers crossed oceans in search of it, discovering new continents along the way. In this episode, we'll get reacquainted with pepper and learn some useful new words and phrases too. And remember, you'll find a transcript for you to read along with us as you

OK. First, I have a question for you, of course, Becca. Although it's black pepper you're most likely to see in shops and restaurants in the UK, there are hundreds of different varieties worldwide. But what is unusual about Phu Quoc, a white pepper from Vietnam? Does it: a) make people cry, b) taste like parmesan cheese, or c) cost more than gold?

Hmm. Well, I don't think it would be as expensive as gold, and I kind of want it to taste like parmesan cheese.

OK. Well, we'll find out later in the programme. Mathilde Roellinger is the daughter of Olivier Roellinger, an award-winning French chef famous for his use of spices. While other little girls of her age were sprinkling sugar on their breakfast yoghurt, Mathilde was the only girl in Paris sprinkling pepper. Today, Mathilde runs the Épices Roellinger spice shop in the Opéra area of the city. Here, customers can find a huge range of peppers, from fruity red Cambodian Kampot pepper to Borneo's Sarawak black pepper with its woody aroma.

These peppers have strong, distinctive tastes, but curiously they enhance rather than overpower the flavour of the food you're eating, as Mathilde explained to BBC World Service programme The Food Chain.

It will give a kick and transform it, but you will still have the savour of the different ingredients. It will not disguise the other ingredients, but it will push them – it's a flavour catalyst. We can say in punctuation, like it's an exclamation.

It's like an exclamation mark.

Exactly.

Mathilde says pepper gives food a kick. To give something a kick means to provide it with extra stimulation or excitement.

Pepper also makes flavours more intense. Mathilde calls it a catalyst – something that causes another action to start or makes it happen more quickly. In fact, she says pepper is like an exclamation mark. Saying something is like an exclamation mark means it shows strong emotion or excitement – the same thing an exclamation mark does in written punctuation.

Mathilde's spice shop holds pepper tasting sessions, where she explains to customers the origin of her peppers and how they grow, changing colour as they harden in the sun. Reporter John Laurenson attended one of these tasting sessions for BBC World Service programme The Food Chain.

The different colours of pepper though, as Mathilde started to say, do not correspond to the different varieties but to the maturity of the peppercorns and what people do to them. They're green when they're young, black when they're mature and dried, red when they're very mature. Grey pepper is an industrial creation, not a botanical one. Ground to a fine powder, it is, says Mathilde, grey dust. She's not very keen on that one.

The colour of pepper is not determined by the variety, but by its maturity. A food's maturity describes the stage when a food is fully grown and ready to harvest. For peppers, this is when they wrinkle and go black.

Often a peppermill is used to grind pepper – to crush it into powder by pressing it between two hard surfaces. This happens with grey pepper, an artificially produced pepper mix which Mathilde is not keen on – meaning she doesn't like it.

We've learned so much about pepper, I'll look at it differently the next time I sprinkle some on my food. OK. Neil, I think it's time to reveal the answer to your question.

Yes, I asked you what's unusual about Phu Quoc, a white pepper from Vietnam.

I answered b) because I want it to taste like parmesan cheese.

Well, you're lucky because it is in fact b) it tastes like parmesan cheese. Well done. OK. Let's recap the vocabulary we've learned, starting with the phrase give something a kick – meaning to add extra thrill or excitement.

A catalyst causes something to start, or speeds it up.

If you say something is like an exclamation mark, you mean it signifies strong emotion, surprise or excitement, just like an exclamation mark does in writing.

A food's maturity refers to the stage when it's fully grown and ready for harvest.

To grind food means to crush it into powder by being pressed between two hard surfaces.

And finally, if you're keen on something, you like it and enjoy doing it. Once again, our six minutes are up, but remember you can find worksheets, quizzes and loads See you there soon, but for now it's goodbye.

Goodbye!