Seville, 1618. Interior of a house. A 19-year-old man named Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez is thinking about how to compose a scene that represents a popular house in his hometown. He chooses, of course, the space that has been quintessential for centuries in a home: the hearth, the place where food is cooked and the most important decisions of a family are made. A home at the beginning of the 17th century requires a woman, preferably older, who, calmly and skillfully, is immersed in her daily chores when a young man seems to take her, but not completely, out of her thoughts. The context is already set, but the young Velázquez now needs objects and ingredients that reinforce the verisimilitude of the scene and that demonstrate, in passing, his skill in representing surfaces of all kinds: a basket, some jugs, a mortar, a stove or a wooden spoon with which the lady helps the egg white to set. But, in addition to eggs, Velázquez decided to introduce other ingredients that truly fill the painting, such as onion, which, at the beginning of the 17th century, together with garlic, formed the basis of any popular stew.
In contrast to the ancestral tradition of these ingredients and forming an axis with the woman’s eyes, her hand and the plate with the knife, an unusual ingredient in the paintings of the time emerges in the shadows: the American pepper. It might seem like a simple anecdote, but the young painter called to portray the greatest figures of 17th century Spain not only gave the painting the final touch of truth, but, perhaps without knowing it, he represented for the first time in the history of art this American fruit as a food and not as a mere curiosity.
Given this novel image, one might ask: how did the pepper become a basic ingredient in popular Andalusian cuisine at the beginning of the 17th century, to the point of representing an entire social group in this painting?
The “poor man’s pepper”
As always, it is worth starting at the beginning. To understand this, let us remember that Columbus’ argument to convince the Catholic Monarchs to finance his expedition was not to set out to conquer new worlds, but, quite simply, to find an alternative route to access the coveted Asian spices without entering into conflict with Portugal. Therefore, it is not surprising that Columbus was so excited when he found the chili pepper, as can be seen from the entry in his diary of January 15, 1493: “There is a lot of chili pepper, which is their pepper, and all the people do not eat without it, as they find it very healthy. Fifty caravels could be loaded each year on that Hispaniola.”
But, as is often the case, reality had other plans. The arrival of the plant brought to light a fact that dashed the admiral’s dreams: the plant and its fruits grew with astonishing ease in the south of Spain. This was already observed by Pedro Mártir de Anglería, who warned at the beginning of the 16th century of the speed with which it grew and lamented that human folly had therefore given it less value than the unattainable pepper. At the end of that century, the Sevillian doctor Nicolás Monardes confirmed the inevitable: “There is no garden, or orchard, or flowerpot that does not have it planted.” In this way, its abundance thwarted the desire for a spice trade with the West Indies and, in the process, discouraged its consumption among the privileged classes, who, when choosing foods (or fabrics, or furniture), preferred those of a limited and inaccessible nature.
The pepper entered as an ornament, but not as food, in the gardens of the palaces from the 16th century, as confirmed by the gardener of Felipe II Gregorio de los Ríos, and also in paintings, like the insignia that hangs from the chest of Rudolf II in Vertumnus costume (1590) by Arcimboldo, or the pot of red fruits in a love scene by Peeter Gijsels. But it would take centuries for it to leave the paintings and flowerbeds and find a place on noble tables.
On the other hand, the working classes, with no possibility of having such objections, applauded the arrival of this new fruit, which when fresh provided colour and flavour to recipes that had been consumed for centuries, such as the original gazpacho, and when dry, gave intensity to stews, becoming from the end of the 16th century “the pepper of the poor”. That someone like Velázquez captured this detail and elevated it to the category of art and a mark of class in his Old woman frying eggs It was just a matter of time, and also of insight.
From popular to global
From then on, references to pepper in texts and paintings are constant. Its use (and abuse) by the popular classes sometimes generated displeasure, as in Rinconete and Cortadillowhere Cervantes speaks of “capers drowned in peppers.” Other times it aroused curiosity, especially among foreign travelers who, like Bartolomé Joly, were forced to try this fruit “that grows in Spain and I have not seen it in the other countries where I have been.” Its colors and shapes did not go unnoticed by the writers of the Golden Age, who did not hesitate to use it for their ingenious metaphors about anger or unbridled sexuality, as in those verses attributed to Góngora: “What gave her the most pleasure/ of the vegetable garden and the orchard/ was, as I imagine,/ a red pepper,/ because another like that one had, her husband Diego.” More restrained, paintings like Christ in the house of Martha and Maryalso made by Velázquez in 1618, or Rogue in the kitchen (ca. 1620) by López Caro confirmed their daily presence in humble settings.
With the arrival of the 18th century, however, we witnessed a radical change in the consideration and use of peppers. The gradual revaluation of vegetables, denigrated for centuries in noble kitchens, and greater scientific knowledge about the benefits of their consumption caused foods that until then had been limited to the working classes, such as peppers or their relatives the tomatoes, to begin to find a place on well-off tables, no longer as a seasoning for stews but, above all, as fresh vegetables. This is shown in the elegant still lifes of Lopez Enguidanos at the beginning of the 19th century or recipe books such as Ancient Spanish cuisine (1913) by Emilia Pardo Bazán, in which she confirms that gazpacho “has become fashionable and, frozen, is served as a summer soup at the King’s table and in the most aristocratic houses.” Peppers had definitely escaped from the humble kitchen of a Sevillian house to become, until today, an ingredient capable of brightening up summer meals in all homes.
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