We were talking about spicy food, specifically Mexican, and the question came up: Since Asian cultures such as India and China produce some breathtakingly fiery foods, did the chili pepper (capsicum), one variety or another, originate in Asia? We thought it was an export from the Americas. Or, did it grow on both continents and was more wide-spread than we imagined?
As a side issue, is the chili de arbol (tree chili) the most commonly known Asian chili, a separate thing from the capsicum chilis of The Americas?
Since this is sort of a spin-off question from the Staff Report, and sort of a new question altogether, it could go in the forum called “General Questions.” I suspect you might get better responses there, but we don’t want double-posting, so here’s my plan: we’ll let it stay here for a while and see what happens. If there’s not much response in the next few days, I’ll move it to the other forum and see if we get better response there.
Genus Capsicum is native to the Americas, but apparently caught on like wildfire in the world-trade boom that ensued after 1500. Spices were a big deal back then, so I hear. Just speculating, I can imagine that the Asian cuisines were already quite well-spiced with native botanicals) but the introduction of the chile simply gave them much more bang-for-the-buck, heat-wise, so it was quickly adopted.
Many food plants native to the Americas were adopted by Old World cuisines to such an extent that we now consider these plants integral to them: the tomatos and green/red peppers in Italian cooking, peanuts and chilis in African and southeast Asian, white potatoes in Irish and German, etc.