An illustrated guide to chili peppers of the world, organized by Capsicum species and cultivar, with notes on origin, heat, form, domestication, and global food history.
Weird how they mention malagueta but omit a far more popular pepper in Brazil, dedo-de-moça:
It’s a Capsicum baccatum variety, related to those ajís amarillos from the infographic. Between 10k and 15k SHU, so it’s hot but by no means as scorching hot as malagueta; that makes it a bit more practical to add to dishes. (Plus dunno about others but I always saw malagueta as something way more regional, from Northeast. Specially Bahia; the text does mention it, but those folks down north use it for sauces.)
Incidentally I was able to cross-breed it with ye olde bell pepper (Capsicum annuum), might as well share the pic here:
That’s F1, mind you. The bell pepper parent is yellow, so I know for sure she has genes for yellow peppers in it. It was barely spicy, way fleshier than the dedo-de-moça, but smaller than the bell pepper.
Now I’m cultivating the F2. My final goal is to make a heirloom variety out of it, then cross-breed it with either chocolate habanero or another cross-breed, for a full gradient of heats and colours:
lime — no heat. Mostly as a bell pepper a bit more resistant to pests, and the climate fuckery of my city. Perhaps for paprika. Colour inherited from the bell pepper (yellow) + habanero (“brown” is basically red pigment forming while the chlorophyll is still there, theoretically I can separate the genes encoding it from the ones encoding the red pigment).
yellow — really mild heat; the sort of pepper you can bite and chew, and you’ll notice the heat, but it won’t be offensive. Mostly for filling it with ground meat and cheese and whatever.
red — heat roughly on the same level as the dedo-de-moça, perhaps a bit spicier? Mostly to use it as seasoning; it’s fleshier and larger than the dedo-de-moça parent, I like it. Plus DDM has a nasty habit of dying in the winter.
brown — ideally as hot as the habanero, except with a different shape. And meatier. For Science!
Ideally shape+size should be like in the F1. Perhaps a bit prettier if I can do it.
There’s also a fourth type of pepper I’m raising, that I don’t see in the graph. I don’t even know it’s name. It grows into a rather large plant (2m height if I don’t prune it), and it seems to be hotter than DDM, so I’m eyeballing ~30k SHU. If possible I’ll cross-breed with the habanero and then use this cross-breed in my project; mostly because the bloody tree endures quite some abuse from cold and heat, and produces a lot of fruit. Still, if I don’t manage to do so before I get a heirloom out of that bell x DDM hybrid, I’m settling for just a trinary hybrid.
Weird how they mention malagueta but omit a far more popular pepper in Brazil, dedo-de-moça:
It’s a Capsicum baccatum variety, related to those ajís amarillos from the infographic. Between 10k and 15k SHU, so it’s hot but by no means as scorching hot as malagueta; that makes it a bit more practical to add to dishes. (Plus dunno about others but I always saw malagueta as something way more regional, from Northeast. Specially Bahia; the text does mention it, but those folks down north use it for sauces.)
Incidentally I was able to cross-breed it with ye olde bell pepper (Capsicum annuum), might as well share the pic here:
That’s F1, mind you. The bell pepper parent is yellow, so I know for sure she has genes for yellow peppers in it. It was barely spicy, way fleshier than the dedo-de-moça, but smaller than the bell pepper.
Now I’m cultivating the F2. My final goal is to make a heirloom variety out of it, then cross-breed it with either chocolate habanero or another cross-breed, for a full gradient of heats and colours:
Ideally shape+size should be like in the F1. Perhaps a bit prettier if I can do it.
There’s also a fourth type of pepper I’m raising, that I don’t see in the graph. I don’t even know it’s name. It grows into a rather large plant (2m height if I don’t prune it), and it seems to be hotter than DDM, so I’m eyeballing ~30k SHU. If possible I’ll cross-breed with the habanero and then use this cross-breed in my project; mostly because the bloody tree endures quite some abuse from cold and heat, and produces a lot of fruit. Still, if I don’t manage to do so before I get a heirloom out of that bell x DDM hybrid, I’m settling for just a trinary hybrid.