Black pepper[edit]
Black pepper is produced from the still-green, unripe
drupe of the pepper plant.[2] The drupes are cooked
briefly in hot water,
both to clean them and to prepare them for drying.
The heat ruptures cell walls in the pepper, speeding
the work of browning
enzymes during drying. The drupes dry in the sun or
by machine for several days, during which the pepper
skin around the seed
shrinks and darkens into a thin, wrinkled black
layer. Once dry, the spice is called black
peppercorn. On some estates, the
berries are separated from the stem by hand and then
sun-dried without the boiling process.
Once the peppercorns are dried, pepper spirit and oil
can be extracted from the berries by crushing them.
Pepper spirit is used in
many medicinal and beauty products. Pepper oil is
also used as an ayurvedic massage oil and in certain
beauty and herbal
treatments.