LONG pepper

What is Long Pepper, and where does it come from? A blooming vine in the Piperaceae family, LONG PEPPER (Piper longum), also sometimes referred to as Indian long pepper or thippali. The plant is mainly grown for its dried fruit, which is used as a spice and flavoring. The pepper's fruit is made up of numerous tiny berries, each approximately the size of a poppy seed, embedded in a flower spike resembling the catkin of a hazel tree. The fruits' spicy flavor results from the alkaloid piperine, also present in Piper nigrum. Long pepper is first mentioned in ancient Indian Ayurvedic texts, where its therapeutic and culinary properties are extensively discussed. It arrived in Greece around the sixth or fifth century BCE. However, Hippocrates only mentioned it as a medicament, not a spice. Prior to the European discoveries of the American continents, long pepper was a significant and well-known spice among the Greeks and Romans. Long pepper was famous before the discovery of the American con