White Pepper
The common white pepper is factitious, being prepared from the black pepper in the following manner:—The pepper is first steeped in sea water and urine, and then exposed to the heat of the sun for several days, till the rind or outer bark loosens; it is then taken out of the steep, and, when dry, it is rubbed with the hand till the rind falls off. The white fruit is then dried, and the remains of the rind blown away like chaff. A great deal of the peculiar flavour and pungent hot taste of the pepper is taken off by this process. White pepper is always inferior in flavour and quality to the black pepper.
However, there is a sort of native white pepper, produced on a species of the pepper plant, which is much better than the factitious, and indeed little inferior to the common black pepper.
Footnotes
104 Thomson’s Annals of Chemistry, 1816; also Repository of Arts, vol. i. 1816, p. 11.
105 George III. c. 53, § 21, 1819.