Introduction
The Sun fell in love with an Earth Girl, told the Maya. He kidnapped her, and to keep her for himself, he trapped her in a tortoiseshell prison. The girl's protective father came at the Sun brandishing a blowgun, but the sneaky Sun had planned ahead, and had filled the father's blowgun with chilli pepper. When the girl's father drew in a deep breath to shoot the Sun, his lungs filled with chilli and he began to cough violently. The father died before the projectile hit the Sun, but once it did hit, it stung the Sun so that he dropped his bride. She fell back to Earth, collided with the ocean, and shattered like a mirror into millions of pieces. The fish in the ocean dutifully put the girl back together again, and then aligned themselves neatly into a seine to deliver her back to the Sun. The Sun, however, had been made so hot by the chilli-spiked dart that the fish couldn't get close enough to reach him. They were left with no choice but to abandon the girl in the sky to become the Moon, and the fish, still in a twinkling net, became the Milky Way.'
From an ancient galactic creation myth to a modern weapon of self-defence, there is perhaps no farther-reaching spice than chillies. However, the global history of the spicy nightshade is only a relatively recent one. Venerated by Mesoamericans for millennia, chillies did not feel the world's
warm spotlight until five centuries ago, when Spaniards returned from American exploration with their bevy of solanaceous discoveries. Its cousins the potato and tomato would eventually go on to take centre stage, but all the while, the chilli was quietly implanting itself into the culinary traditions of the world, waiting for its moment to shine.
It would not have to wait long: three decades after it was introduced to Europe by the Spanish, paprika peppers (Capsicum annuum) were being grown by Turkic monks in the Buda region of Hungary. Paprika would eventually become so popular that by the 1820s, it had all but replaced pepper and ginger in Hungarian kitchens. It was then that the 500-year-old dish goulash transformed into paprikash and became the national dish of Hungary. Before the sixteenth century was over, chillies had helped shape the culinary identities of innumerable world cuisines: Cajun, Jamaican, Ethiopian, Indian, Thai, Sichuan, Korean and many more.
Today chillies have regained their rightful place as a botanical superstar. Chilli-eating competitions showcase strength and machismo, and chillies have been used as a stimulating aphrodisiac for centuries. In 1912 the American pharmacist Wilbur Scoville gave his name to the measurement of pungency used to quantify chilli peppers' heat. More recently, biochemists have discovered that the active constituent behind the pepper's heat capsaicin - shows promise as a treatment for neuropathic pain, prostate cancer and leukaemia.
This little book cannot possibly discuss each of the hundreds of varieties of chillies - a list that is growing by the day - nor will it attempt to. It will instead examine how the spread of one odd little berry changed the way the world eats and the way we hurt and heal ourselves, and the ecstatic mania that ensued in the process.
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