Red pepper

“ Stuffed red peppers:—Open the pepper, take out the seeds and wash and dry carefully. Boil and then chop fine as much fresh pork as you will need to stuff your peppers. In a dish of hot lard put the meat with plenty of fine-cut tomatoes and onions, salt and pepper. Boil a few moments, then add a little sugar, cloves, cinnamon, almonds, and raisins cut in half, cook a little, then fill the peppers. If you have eight peppers beat three eggs, whites and yolks separately; when well beaten put together, and in this roll the peppers, having first sprinkled over them a little flour. ”

“ It is supported much as hops are. When the berries on a spike begin to turn red they are gathered, as they lose pungency if they are allowed to ripen. They are placed on mats, and are either trodden with the feet or rubbed by the hands to separate them from the spike, after which they are cleaned by winnowing. Black pepper consists of such berries wrinkled and blackened in the process of drying, and white pepper of similar berries freed from the skin and the fleshy part of the fruit by being soaked in water and then rubbed. ”

“ Our greater supply now comes from Zanzibar, Nepaul, Bombay, and Penang. Almost every gardener knows the red pepper plant. The plants are generally started in a nursery or hot-house in early spring, from the seed, and are transplanted when a few inches high, as soon as the weather will permit, in the prepared garden, about four feet apart. When about six inches high, a little rich fertilizer should be worked in the soil about the plants. The Cayenne pepper plant is an annual and is a slow grower, and it seldom rises higher than four feet. ”

“ The pepper-tree is a tall bush-like plant, that, when trained and supported with props, will attain a height varying from fifteen to eighteen feet. The pepper grows in small, grape-like bunches, which are first red, then green, and lastly, nearly black. The plant begins to bear in the second year.
White pepper is not a natural production, but is obtained by dipping the black pepper several times in sea-water: this causes it to lose its colour, and become a dirty white. The price of a pikul of white pepper is six dollars (24s.) , whereas that of a pikul of black is only three dollars (12s.) ”

“ When a man has been long consuming red pepper, it takes much red pepper to stimulate his palate. Had Mrs. Tappitt merely advised her husband, in proper conjugal phraseology, to relinquish his trade and to retire to Torquay, her advice, she knew, would have had no weight. ”

“ Often a harmless mixture of red ink, red pepper, ginger, or other pungent substance is given, with a multiplicity of confusing directions, bewildering the messenger dispatched for relief, who, in repeating them, often makes mistakes and advises that the whole quantity be swallowed. ”

“ The quantity of pepper in the mixture is increased gradually, until two heaping teaspoonfuls are used. Addition of a little brown sugar and a few drops of pure olive oil is beneficial, and a small quantity of hot red pepper gives a better flavor. The food should be prepared fresh each day, and in mixing allowance must be made for variation in the size of eggs used. ”

“ Red pepper enters into most of the dishes in torrid climates, and there is a good and sufficient reason for this apparent mistake. Intense and long-continued heat weakens the action of the liver, and thus lessens the supply of bile; and red pepper has the power of stimulating the liver, and so assisting digestion. ”

“ The principal source of cayenne pepper is C. frutescens, the spur or goat pepper, a dwarf shrub, a native of South America, but commonly cultivated in the East Indies. It produces a small, narrow, bright red pod, having very pungent properties. C. tetragonum, or bonnet pepper, is a species much esteemed in Jamaica; it bears very fleshy fruits. Other well-known kinds of capsicum are the cherry pepper (C. cerasiforme) , with small berries; bell pepper (C. grossum) , which has thick and pulpy fruit, well adapted for pickling; and berry or bird pepper (C. baccatum) . ”

“ The broken leg was set and bandaged, the injured man was conveyed back to the wagon which had brought him; and Red Pepper Burns took a last look at his patient, in the light of the lantern carried by the countryman.
"You've been game as any fighting man, Tom," said he, cheerily. "The drive home'll be no midsummer-night's-dream, but I see that upper lip of yours is stiff for it. Good-night—and good luck! We'll take care of the luck." ”

“ The white pepper is merely the black deprived of its outside skin. For this purpose the finest red berries are selected, and put in baskets to steep, either in running water, or in pits dug for the purpose, near the banks of rivers. Sometimes they are only buried in the ground. ”

“ Ground cayenne pepper soon loses its bright color when kept too long or exposed to the light, and becomes dingy in appearance, so it is not always wise to judge by looks alone, as red ocher, turmeric, mustard, rice, sawdust, salt, brick dust, etc., have been found in cayenne pepper. ”

“ He smiled, a brilliant, heart-warming smile, and suddenly he looked, to the man on the bed who gazed at him, more like a conqueror than any one he had ever seen. And all at once James Van Horn understood why, with all his faults of temper and speech, his patients loved and clung to Red Pepper Burns; and why he, Van Horn himself, had not been able to defeat Burns as a rival. There was something about the man which spoke of power, and at this moment it seemed clear, even to the skeptic, that it was not wholly human power. ”

“ I haven't many rugs, and the floors will show a good deal."
"I didn't know artists were ever such practical people," confessed Mrs. Red Pepper Burns, sitting on the edge of a straight-backed old chair in the small kitchen. The house boasted but four rooms, two below and two above, with a small enclosure off the kitchen which had been used for a bedroom in the benighted days when people knew no better, and which Charlotte had promptly set aside for a dark room.
"Practical? I'm not an artist, as you use the word, but I assure you real artists are the most practical people in the world. ”

“ I'd know by the look of him that he must be Red Pepper Burns." She went over and examined the pictured face closely. "I could make a better picture of him than that,—I know it without seeing him in the flesh. What a splendid pair of eyes! Do they look right down into your inmost thoughts—or do they see only as far as your liver? Fine head, good mouth, straight nose, chin like a stone wall! Goodness! do you never meet up with that chin?"
She looked around at Ellen with mischief in her bright brown eyes.
"Of course I do! Would you have a man chinless?" ”

“ Cayenne pepper is occasionally adulterated with red lead, vermilion, ochre, salt, ground-rice and turmeric. The taste of the pepper is impaired by exposure to damp and the heat of the sun. Chillies have been in use from time immemorial; they are eaten in great quantity by the people of Guiana and other warm countries, and in Europe are largely consumed both as a spice and as medicine.
The dried ripe fruit of Capsicum frutescens from Zanzibar, known as pod pepper and Guinea pepper, is official in the British Pharmacopoeia under the name Capsici Fructus. ”

“ Flattering the members of your own family is not a part of it." Dismissing him with a smile which made him more than ever eager for her company, she turned away, to devote herself, as her husband was doing, to the least attractive of the guests.
The evening wore away at last, and at a reasonably early hour the hosts were free. The last fellow citizen had barely delivered his parting speech and taken himself off when Red Pepper Burns turned a handspring in the middle of the deserted room, and came up grinning like a fiend. ”

“ Dried peppers bring a good price per ounce, and fine Chili pepper grows wild everywhere. So far, trade is nil.
Another: One of the commonest plants in the Southern Pacific, a weed bearing a bright red flower almost exactly like the pine-cone in shape, contains, in the flower, a quantity of white watery liquid, which is declared by the natives, and by many of the whites, to be an exceptionally fine hair tonic. ”

“ The houses on the road were built of laterite, large and comfortable like those at Calicut. We saw the people sitting before their doors, busy with their heaps of pepper. When the berries have been gathered they are dried in the sun on mats, and turn from red to black. The white pepper is from the same plant, the fruit being freed from the outer skin by macerating the ripe berries in water. Before reaching Cannanore we passed over three or four miles of elevated rocky land, without cultivation, and arrived in the cantonment late at night. ”

“ Leaver looked at him as one man looks at another when he loves him better than a brother. Then he put a question to Red Pepper's wife: "Can any one wonder that there seems something missing in America when he spends the winter in Germany?" ”

“ We left in pretty good time, and came after nightfall to Klausenburgh. Here I stopped for the night at the Hotel Royale. I had for dinner, or rather supper, a chicken done up some way with red pepper, which was very good but thirsty. (Mem., get recipe for Mina.) I asked the waiter, and he said it was called "paprika hendl," and that, as it was a national dish, I should be able to get it anywhere along the Carpathians. ”

“ Pepper—Some of the peppers make very attractive pot plants on account of their bright fruit, which is very pretty in all stages of growth from the new green pods, through yellow to bright red. Buy new plants or start from seed in spring. They are easily grown if kept on the warm side. Celestial and Kaleidoscope are the two kinds best suited for house culture. ”

“ My plan worked all right. The minute you saw the child your instincts and training got the better of your caution. That's what they'll continue to do if you give them a chance. See here, you don't mean to quit your profession and take to carpentry, do you?"
"I expect to practise medicine," Leaver said, and there was a queer setting of his lips as he said it.
"Medicine! You? Jack, you couldn't do it."
"Couldn't I? I don't know that I could." He drew a half shuddering breath. "But I can try, somewhere, if not in Baltimore."
"I'd like to thrash you!" cried Red Pepper Burns, and he looked it. ”

“ I dined on what they called robber steak—bits of bacon, onion, and beef, seasoned with red pepper, and strung on sticks and roasted over the fire, in the simple style of the London cat's meat! ”

“ Redfield Pepper Burns, physician and surgeon, descended from the car, a brawny figure in an enveloping gray motoring coat. He wore no hat upon his heavy crop of coppery red hair—somewhere under the seat his cap was abandoned, as usual. His face was brown with tan—a strong, fine face, with dark-lashed hazel eyes alight under thick, dark eyebrows. From head to foot he was a rather striking personality.
"This time," said he, firmly, "I'm going to leave the top up. It's putting temptation in the way of something very weak to keep lowering the top. We'll leave it up. There'll be one advantage." ”

“ Oh, where did they come from?"
"There's a note that came with them," admitted Miss Arden presently, when she had let the question go unanswered for some time, while Anne, seeming to forget that she had asked it, smelled and smelled of the cool white and green branches as if she could never have enough of them. Into her eyes had leaped a strange look, as if some memory were connected with these outdoor flowers which made them different for her from the hothouse blooms, or even from the daffodils and tulips that had alternated with the roses which had come often since her convalescence began. ”

“ If the berries are left too long on the vines they lose part of their aromatic, pungent hot taste, and if gathered too soon they become broken and dusty in drying. After drying, when they become black and shriveled up, they are cleaned and winnowed. Good black pepper is firm and not too deeply wrinkled, does not easily crumble or break in the hand, it is also heavy and readily sinks in water. The inner seed should be hard, round and smooth and of a grayish-brown color. ”

“ The active properties of pepper are an acrid resin,51 a volatile oil, and a crystallizable, colorless substance called pipertine, or peperic. Why white pepper should be preferred before the black is one of the anomalies of the trade. White pepper has really only about a quarter the strength of black pepper, and is the least economical to use for these reasons: (1) Because of being allowed to ripen it loses much of its pungency. (2) Because it is deprived of the outer skin or husk, which contains much of the constituents which go to make good pepper. ”

“ The harvest begins as soon as one or two berries at the base of the spikes begin to turn red, and before the fruit is mature, but when full grown and still hard, if allowed to ripen, the berries lose pungency, and ultimately fall off and are lost. ”

“ His face, as he spoke, was as pale as Burns's was high-coloured, and Ellen recognized that here were the two sorts of wrath in apposition, the "red" sort and the "white." And looking at Dr. Van Horn's face, it seemed to her that she still preferred the red. But as his eyes met hers he smiled the same suave smile which she had seen before.
"Not tired of waiting yet, Mrs. Burns?" he said, as he passed her. "You must be a restful companion for a man harassed by many cares." ”

“ For an hour, in the light from one of the Green Imp's lamps, Chester sat on an overturned box and watched Burns work. He worked savagely, as if applying surgical measures to a mood as well as to a machine. He worked like a skilled mechanic as well; every turn of a nut, every polish of a thread meaning definite means to an end. ”

“ The night was hot and he had thrown off coat and collar and rolled his sleeves high, so a brawny arm gleamed in the bright lamplight, and the open shirt exposed a powerful neck. Chester, who was of slighter build and not as tall as he would have liked to be, watched enviously.
“Whatever goes wrong with your affairs, Red,” he observed suddenly, breaking a long interval during which the engine had been made to throb and whirl like the “ten thousand furies” to whom its engineer had lately made allusion, “you have the tremendous asset of a magnificent body to fall back on for comfort.” ”