Paprika

Paprika is a spice made from dried and ground red peppers, traditionally capsicum annuum. It can have varying levels of heat, but the peppers used for even hot paprika tend to be milder and have thinner flesh than those used to produce chili powder. The milder, sweet paprika is mostly composed of the fruit of the pepper with most of the seeds removed; whereas some seeds and stalks are retained in the peppers used for hotter paprika.
Paprika, like all capsicum varieties and their derivatives, is descended from wild ancestors from the Amazonas, cultivated in ancient times in South, Central and North America, in particular central Mexico. The peppers were introduced to Europe, via Spain and Portugal, in the sixteenth century. The trade in paprika expanded from the Iberian Peninsula to Africa and Asia and ultimately reached central Europe through the Balkans.
European cuisines in which paprika is a frequent and major ingredient include those of Hungary, Spain and Portugal; it is also found in many French and German dishes. It is widely used in North Africa and the Middle East.
Paprika is a spice made from dried and powdered red peppers. It is traditionally made from Capsicum annuum varietals in the Longum group, including chili peppers. Peppers originated in North America, where they grow in the wild in Mexico. They were being gathered and eaten there c.7000 BC, and were cultivated there before 3500 BC. The food writer Alan Davidson comments that Columbus probably came across them on his first voyage in 1492, and may have brought plants back to Europe. The Spaniards and Portuguese also took them to India and south-east Asia and they were quickly taken up and grown in the Middle East, the Balkans and Europe – to Italy by 1526, Germany by 1543 and Hungary by 1569.
Paprika was also taken up in the Ottoman Empire, which for much of the 16th and 17th centuries, ruled the central region of Hungary. The long period of Turkish presence introduced several foodstuffs to the region, including filo pastry (which evolved into the strudel), pilafs, pitta bread and paprika. The plant used to make the Hungarian version of the spice was first grown in 1569. Central European paprika was hot until the 1920s, when a Szeged breeder found a plant that produced sweet fruit, which he grafted onto other plants. According to George Lang in his Cuisine of Hungary (1994), the earliest reference to paprika peppers in a Hungarian dictionary was in 1604, when the name used was Török-bors (Turkish pepper). The name "paprika" did not come into currency in Hungary until 1775, when J. Csapé, in his Herbarium, called it "paprika garden pepper".
The first recorded use of the word paprika in English is from 1830. The Times mentioned "A' borsos levecskét – the pepper soup, or paprika soup, made of the capsicum annuum of Linne ... a favourite dish among the Magyars, Turks, and Servians". In Spices, Salt and Aromatics in the English Kitchen (1970), Elizabeth David notes that in cookery books of the Edwardian era, paprika is sometimes referred to as "Krona pepper".
The word paprika is originally Serbo-Croatian, a diminutive of papar, which in turn was derived from the Latin piper (pepper). "Paprika" and similar words, including "peperke", "piperke" and "paparka", are used in various languages for peppers.
Paprika can have varying levels of heat, but the chili peppers used for hot paprika tend to be milder and have thinner flesh than those used to produce chili powder. Sweet paprika is mostly composed of the pericarp, with more than half of the seeds removed; hot paprika contains some seeds, stalks, ovules and calyces. Whether paprika is red, orange, or yellow depends on its mix of carotenoids. Yellow-orange shades of paprika derive primarily from α-carotene and β-carotene (provitamin A compounds), zeaxanthin, lutein and β-cryptoxanthin; reds derive from capsanthin and capsorubin. One study found high concentrations of zeaxanthin in orange paprika. The same study found that orange paprika contains much more lutein than red or yellow paprika.
Paprika is produced in various places, including Argentina, Mexico, Serbia, the Netherlands, China and the United States, but the two best-known producers are Hungary and Spain.
Hungary is a major source of paprika, and it is the spice most closely associated with Hungary. Lang lists and characterises the commercial grades of Hungarian paprika as:
Davidson comments that the five are in descending order of excellence.
The two principal growing areas in Hungary are in the south of the country, one around the city of Szeged and the other in Kalocsa, on the Danube.
Pimentón is a powdered spice produced in Spain from the small round fruits of several varieties of capsicum annuum. According to the Oxford Companion to Food:
There are three versions of Spanish paprika: mild (pimentón dulce), mildly spicy (pimentón agridulce) and spicy (pimentón picante). The most common, pimentón de la Vera, has a distinct smoky taste and smell, as it is dried by smoking, typically using oak wood. Currently, according to the Denomination of Origin Regulation Council (Consejo Regulador de la DOP "Pimentón de La Vera"), the crop of La Vera paprika covers around 1,500 hectares (3,700 acres) and has an annual production of 4.5 million kg (5,000 short tons), certified as Denomination of Origin. Pimentón de Murcia is an unsmoked variety made with bola/ñora peppers and traditionally dried in the sun or in kilns.
Paprika is used as an ingredient throughout the world in dishes such as rice, stews and soups and in the preparation of sausages, mixed with meats and other spices.
Hungarian's best-known national dishes both incorporate paprika: a meat soup, gulyás, and a stew internationally known as goulash but called in Hungary pörkölt, porkélt or paprikas. Paprikash, a sauce combining paprika, onions and sour cream, is used in chicken and veal dishes and with savoury crèpes. David comments on paprika:
In a 2016 study Zsuzsa Gille writes that paprika is:
In Spanish cuisine, paprika is an essential ingredient of chorizo pork sausages. In contrast to the less well-known chorizo from the French side of the Pyrenees, which is traditionally spiced with piment d'Espelette, Spanish chorizos are spiced with pimentón. The sausage may be mild or spicy depending on the type of paprika used. Valencian paella uses both paprika and saffron in the mix of rice, meat and vegetables. Paprika features in Basque cuisine. David instances Moules au riz à la Basquaise (mussels with spiced rice, Basque style) and Faisan au riz Basquais (pheasant with spiced rice). In sofrito, the aromatic mixture of diced vegetables used as the basis of many stews and casseroles, Spanish cooks typically add paprika to the mix.
In Portuguese cuisine, where it is known as colorau, paprika plays an important part. It accounts for the orange shade and piquant taste of many of Portugal's pork and poultry dishes, and is similar to a hot Hungarian paprika. Paprika is also much used in fish dishes including eels, cuttlefish and the mixed fish stew caldeirada. It deepens the shade of some Portuguese cheeses, and adds spice to the local equivalent of chorizo, chouriço.
Paprika plays a part in French cuisine. In their Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Simone Beck, Louisette Bertholle and Julia Child give recipes for fricassée de poulet au paprika (chicken fricassee with paprika) and suprêmes de volaille Archiduc (chicken breasts with paprika, onions and cream). Some French dishes featuring paprika as an important ingredient are called "hongroise" (Hungarian). Most of them use sauce hongroise – chopped onions cooked with paprika and white wine – and generally have cream added to the cooked sauce. They include potage de haricots hongroise (bean and bacon soup with paprika and sour cream), anguille hongroise (eel), pieds de veau à la hongroise (calves' feet), oeufs hongroise (hard-boiled eggs), grenouilles hongroise (frogs' legs), homard hongroise (lobster), sole hongroise, turbot hongroise and escalope de veau hongroise. Pommes de terre hongroise – Hungarian potatoes – consist of large rounds of potatoes, with chopped onions, cooked in butter and paprika, with diced tomatoes and moistened with consommé. Rouille, a French sauce with paprika and garlic, is traditionally served with bouillabaisse.
In German cookery, paprika is used in many dishes, from fish stews to braised duck, casseroled hare, braised veal, fried goose liver, stuffed cabbage leaves, meat dumplings, and beef goulash (known in German as Rindergulasch). According to the chef Rick Stein, "The people of Vienna love goulash so much they’ve taken the Hungarian dish and made it their own. The secret is to use lots of onion". The recipe calls for both sweet and hot paprika.
In Moroccan cuisine, paprika (tahmira) is much used in dishes such as bissara and chermoula. In Arabian food paprika is an ingredient of the spice mix Baharat. Throughout the Middle East, paprika may be sprinked onto hummus just before it is served, and it is frequently used to garnish baba ghanoush.
Paprika is little used in Italian cuisine. The Friuli region in the north-east, a former part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, features a spread called Liptauer, in which salted anchovies are mixed with ricotta, butter, paprika, chopped onion and other ingredients, and further south, in Molise, paprika is used in the salami ventricina. Unlike the Spanish sofrito, Italian soffrito typically uses garlic rather than paprika.