Reflections | How Asians embraced the chilli pepper
Brought from the Americas by Europeans, the spread of the chilli plant was slow but by the 19th century it had conquered cuisines across the region
The chilli pepper is famously present in Korean cuisine to the point of near ubiquity, and yet the plant is not native to Asia.
It was the Europeans who brought the plant from its native Americas to the rest of the world. Before the late 15th and early 16th centuries, Asian palates were strangers to the heady piquancy of the chilli pepper.
It is difficult to imagine the cuisines of Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore and Korea – or the spicier Chinese culinary traditions of Sichuan and Hunan provinces – without fiery chilli peppers, either in their raw form or in pastes and sauces.
Chilli peppers reached China both by land, via the Silk Road, and by sea, carried on ships from Spain and Portugal.
The first record of chilli peppers in Chinese sources is in Eight Treatises on Following the Principles of Life, an encyclopaedia completed during the late Ming dynasty, in 1591. It describes the plant as having “white flowers and a fruit that resembles a blunt tip of a writing brush. It is spicy to the taste and red in colour. It looks very attractive”.