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Cayenne, Home-Made
Cayenne is so much adulterated, and varies so much in strength, that we strongly advise those who are partial to it to make it themselves. Some of that sold in England has been found to be coloured with red lead, and even that sold in Jamaica is not to be relied upon, as it is prepared from several sorts of red capsicums all of inferior quality both in pungency and flavour. The best time to make it is in September or October, and the chillies should be used as fresh as possible. Take two hundred large chillies, remove the stalks and dry them in a colander before the fire, being careful that they do not burn. Pound them, with a quarter of their weight in salt, to a fine powder. Put the powder into a bottle and cork it closely. The flavour of this cayenne will be superior to that sold in the shops, and it will not be nearly so fiery. Time, fourteen hours to dry. Sufficient for a quarter of a pound of cayenne. Probable cost of chillies, from 1s. 6d. to 3s. per hundred.
This is a seasoned chilli salt rather than the pure ground cayenne sold today, and that difference explains most of what follows.
- The salt is a quarter of the weightPounding the dried chillies with 25 per cent salt by weight is why the book promises something "not nearly so fiery" — it is diluted. Treat the finished powder as a seasoning salt and cut back on other salt in the dish accordingly.
- "Before the fire" means very low heatA colander set near an open hearth gave gentle, dry, moving air, well below oven heat, though the book gives no temperature. A dehydrator or an oven at its lowest setting with the door propped is the nearest equivalent; anything hotter scorches the sugars and turns the flavour bitter, which is the fault the recipe warns against.
- Fourteen hours is a guide, not a ruleDry until the flesh is brittle enough to snap rather than bend. Thick-walled modern chillies can take considerably longer, and any residual moisture will cause the bottled powder to cake and eventually mould.
- Two hundred chillies is not a weightThe yield given — a quarter of a pound of finished powder, salt included — implies fairly small, thin-fleshed pods. Work by weight instead: about 3 1/4 oz of dried chilli to about 3/4 oz of salt.
- Which chilliVictorian "chillies" were generally small red annuum types of the sort now sold as cayenne or ripe bird's-eye. Habanero-type pods are a different species and far hotter; substituting them changes the result entirely.
- Grinding safetyFine capsaicin dust is a genuine irritant to eyes and airways. Grind in a covered spice mill or a bagged mortar, let the dust settle before opening, and keep your face away from the jar.
- StorageCork and a glass bottle were what the period had. Colour and pungency both fade in light, so use an airtight jar in a dark cupboard and expect a year of good flavour.
- The price line1s. 6d. to 3s. per hundred chillies is Victorian money and tells you only that home-made cayenne was cheap relative to the adulterated shop article.
Cayenne is popularly linked with Cayenne in French Guiana, but the word is generally traced instead to a Tupi name for the capsicum pod, the resemblance to the place-name being at best a later association; by the nineteenth century the powder reaching Britain came mostly from the West Indies and India. The suspicion voiced here was well founded: the adulteration of cayenne with red lead and vermilion to brighten its colour was reported by Frederick Accum in his 1820 Treatise on Adulterations of Food and Culinary Poisons and again in Arthur Hill Hassall's microscopical analyses published in The Lancet in the 1850s, which reported lead compounds, brick dust and turmeric in commercial samples. Ground spices were among the easiest of groceries to debase, since colour and pungency could be faked and no consumer could see the original pod. The advice to make your own in September or October belongs to that long anxiety about the grocer's tin — the same reasoning that led Victorian households to roast their own coffee and grind their own pepper.