CHILE PEPPER
Entire encyclopedias (such as De- Witt’s “The Chile Pepper Encyclopedia”) have been written about the capsicum genus and its 23 species, all of them descended from Mexican ancestors.
Chiles range in heat from the bell pepper’s zero Scoville units to 500,000 for some habaneros. (The Scoville Scale measures capsaicin in parts per million, expressed as a Scoville unit.) A typical jalapeño is about 50,000 units, and pepper spray has 2 million.
Find it: in fresh, pickled, dried and powdered, each with its own flavor and use
Feel it: in the lips, tongue and cheeks
Try it: chopped up in salads or powdered in brownies
BLACK PEPPER
One of the earliest recorded seasonings, used to pay ransom and taxes in ancient times, the dried berries of the piper nigrum bush appear in the Hindu Vedas and the Roman Apicius’s cookbook, written around the time of Christ.
Humans have pursued this mild spice nearly as long as they’ve been cooking. The compound piperine acts on the same nerve receptors as capsaicin, but with much less effect, as it’s much less pungent. “Any cook who can elevate the quality of just this one spice in his rack will do a great service to his cuisine,” writes Tony Hill in “The Contemporary Encyclopedia of Herbs & Spices.”
Find it: next to the salt on most tables in America. But seriously, look for fat, black to red-brown Tellicherry peppercorns from the Indian mountain of the same name.
Feel it: on the front of the tongue and toward the back of the throat
Try it: on melon
CINNAMON
Cinnamon in America is generally cassia, a cousin of the “the “true” cinnamon, a thinner bark with a subtle, complex flavor. “When I want punch and potency, I reach for cassia; for complexity and subtlety, I grab the true cinnamon,” says Hill in “The Contemporary Encyclopedia of Herbs & Spices.”
The sweet heat of cinnamon comes from the same substance that gives chiles their heat — capsaicin.
Find it: in any spice cabinet, but seek out true cinnamon, also called Ceylon, baker’s or soft-stick cinnamon from Sri Lanka.
Feel it: on the lips (it’s used in some lip-plumpers)
Try it: in chili con carne
GINGER
This knobby root appears fresh, candied and powdered, and gets its pungency from volatile oils called gingerols and shogaols. The latter are more pronounced in dried ginger, making it hotter than fresh, which can have a sweet, citrusy quality.
Find it: in grocery stores in all forms
Feel it: fresh ginger gives an all-over sweet heat that floats through the nose; powdered is hotter and more bitter
Try it: in sweet potatoes and tea
WASABI
The green powder and paste we usually see is actually powdered horseradish, Chinese mustard, cornstarch and food coloring. “The phony wasabi is tasty in its own right, but it’s only a pale imitation of the real thing,” writes DeWitt on his website, fiery-foods . “On the other hand, if a nubby, little green carrot appears at your table, with a fine-toothed grater, then you can rest assured you have the real thing.”
Find it: the green powder is sold in grocery stores, but look for a higher-quality blend at specialty and Asian markets
Feel it: all the way up your sinuses, culminating in an implosion between the eyes
Try it: in dips and salad dressing
