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Piper guineense
Also called Benin Pepper, Guinea Cubeb, Ashanti Pepper
Piper guineense is a West African climbing pepper, grown mainly for its dried, pungent fruit used as a spice. It is a tropical climber or epiphyte that needs warm, humid conditions and shade to thrive.
Piper guineense is a West African species of Piper; the spice derived from its dried fruit is known as Ashanti pepper, Benin pepper, Edo pepper, false cubeb, Guinea cubeb, and called locally kale, kukauabe, masoro, etiñkeni, sasema, soro wisa, eyendo, eshasha by the Urhobo people, iyere or ata-iyere by the Yoruba and oziza and uziza by the Igbo people of Nigeria. It is a close relative of cubeb pepper and a relative of black pepper and long pepper. Unlike cubeb, which is large and spherical in shape, Ashanti pepper grains are prolate spheroids, smaller and smoother than cubeb pepper in appearance and generally bear a reddish tinge. The stalks of Ashanti pepper berries are also distinctly curved whilst those of cubeb pepper are completely straight.
It is used in West African cuisine where it imparts spiciness and a pungent aroma to stews. Even in West Africa, Ashanti pepper is an expensive spice and is used sparingly. Often, a few grains are ground in a pestle and mortar before being added (along with black pepper) to soups or to boiled rice. The spice can also be substituted in any recipe calling for cubeb pepper, where Ashanti imparts a less bitter flavour. The pepper is also sometimes one of the ingredients in the Berbere spice mix used in the cuisines of Ethiopia and of Eritrea. However, West African Pepper is a highly esteemed spice in its region of origin and may be hard to get abroad; thus, long pepper is more often used in Berbere.
Higuillo de hoja menuda · Vera cruz pepper · Betel · Madagascan Wild Pepper · Javanese Long Pepper · Cubeb · Piper darienense · Kadsura Pepper · Long pepper · Kava · Black pepper · Javanese long pepper
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Piper guineense by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts and the care summary drawn from them are shared under the same licence.
The care summary was written by AI (Claude, Anthropic) from the sources on this page, with general growing knowledge where they are silent. Check before relying on it.
Life form, climate and native range: World Checklist of Vascular Plants, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (CC BY 3.0), reformatted; see Plants of the World Online.
