Peanuts are South American as well, so you can add satay and a whole bunch of other SE Asian foods.
What, no Bosco? (advertising slogan from 1964 for a chocolate syrup which came through the Columbian Exchange)
ETA: If I had to go to that length to explain a joke it probably wasn’t worth it, I guess, so I will spare you a connected anecdote. 
Satay is just grilled meat on a stick, it doesn’t have to have the peanut sauce. Although it does originate only in the 18th C.
In the UK at least, satay is used to refer to the sauce separately as well as the meat onna stick. In fact, you can buy stuff like ‘Authentic satay noodles’ which contain neither meat not sticks, but do include peanut sauce, because we don’t have another name for the sauce, other than ‘South East Asian peanut sauce’ which looks stupid on a jar.
Yeah, it’s not the original use, but what do you expect from English?
There’s some evidence that chilis had already reached Asia before de Gama (though there seems to be no explanation of how they got there).
There’s a double meaning to the statement “Indians season their food with pepper”. Before Columbus, Europeans were familiar with Indians as being the people of India, and with pepper as the spice that’s now ubiquitous in shakers or grinders on tables. When Columbus reached the Americas and thought he was in Asia, he assumed that the people he met were natives of the Indies, and so called them Indians, and likewise assumed that the fiery plants in the food were related to black pepper, and so called them peppers.
When I lived in St. Louis, the local ISKCON temple was blessed with an excellent cook, who was renowned throughout the organization, and who attracted tons of customers and guests. When I tried ISKCON food in other cities, it was never half as good as in St. Louis.
The St. Louis chef liked it hot. That was the place that trained me to eat hot. I took cooking classes there as well.
I got some long pepper once. The flavor cloyed before long. The undertone was sickly sweet. You can only use a little. Now the only thing I ever use it for is adding small amounts to berbere blends.
Tellicherry black pepper is a Piper nigrum cultivar distinguished by extra hotness. I don’t know if it had yet been developed in the old days, but with Tellicherry pepper you could have a pretty hot curry made of all native Asian ingredients.
That’s true! (Except for it being a Thai sauce made with cayenne peppers.)
I thought it was red jalapeños and/or red fresnos. Never heard of cayenne being used in at least the Huy Fong brand (which is the usual Sriracha for most Americans). ETA: Wikipedia says red jalapeños.
For the color, strength of the pepper flavor and the heat level, it doesn’t seem anywhere near hot enough to be cayenne peppers unless those cayennes were cut with red bell peppers or something.
I think what Johanna was saying is that sriracha (small ‘s’ generic term for the sauce) is a Thai-originating type of sauce, as opposed to the branded Sriracha (big ‘S’ product from Huy Fong foods in California). The former may be made with cayenne while the latter is made with jalapenos.
In that case, I would assume they would use one of their local chiles. Perhaps one of those is cayenne, but I don’t know. The differences between various cultivars can get difficult to ascertain.
Thanks for the comments, all.
Was not aware that black pepper was different from the capsicum New World varieties.
Just curious - do any old pre-1500 South Asian recipes survive, that could give some indication of the changes in cuisine? I know there are pre-1500 recipes in some European sources.
Naming capsicum as “pepper” is another one of those Old World/New World errors that are all too common. That is, someone named something in the New World after something it resembled in the Old World, but which was actually unrelated or only distantly related. And of course this caused lots of confusion. Other examples are calling skunks polecats and the American robin.
And BTW, cayenne is capsicum, so not used in pre-1500 Thai food.
Sure.
Thanks, MrDibble. That’s fascinating. looks up other ancient cookbooks
Not just black pepper - green and white pepper also come from the same plant. In many ways, the history of pepper is the history of the modern word; both de Gama and (to a lesser extent) Columbus were looking for a way to reach India by sea and thus purchase pepper directly.
There are also other Old World peppers, such as Sichuan.
While we’re at it, all of the capsicums fall into only a handful of species. Most (including the bell pepper, jalapeno, serrano, poblano, Hungarian wax, and cayenne) are Capsicum annuum. The “superpeppers” (habanero, bhut jolokia, Carolina reaper, etc.) are Capsicum chinense. Of the other three species, the only varietal I’ve even heard of is the Tabasco pepper, which is a Capsicum frutescens, except that there’s some dispute as to whether that’s even a separate species from C. annuum.
There’s a rather good Roman one, I’ve cooked several dishes from it. The roast peaches with honey, cumin and fish sauce is particularly delicious.
In addition to the above notes on green and white peppercorns, note that pink peppercorns are from yet another, unrelated plant, Schinus molle. There is, though, such a thing as red peppercorns, which come from the same plant as the white/black/green pepper. These are not very common. (I don’t think I’ve ever seen true red peppercorns for sale myself, but Googling suggests there may be some places that sell it (though I can’t tell if they’re truly red peppercorns, or just pink peppercorns.) When you buy those four-pepper blends, you usually get white, green, black, and pink, for instance, with the pink being the odd peppercorn out, not being of the Piper genus.
Then you also have your oddball peppers, like Tasmanian pepper, Japanese Sansho pepper (related to Sichuan pepper), which are also not of the Piper genus.
Capsicum baccatum has some peppers some of our readers may be familiar with. If you’ve had Peruvian or Bolivian cuisine, you probably have encountered aji amarillo at some point. There’s also the lemon drop/aji limon, but the aji amarillo is the one I’m most familiar with. Goya makes a paste that you can buy at supermarkets at least around here. I grew a few plants from seed a few years ago, and they are distinct from the C. annuums and C. chinense. I would describe them somewhat similar to the C. chinense in terms of their fruitiness, but without anywhere near the heat. (They are about as hot as Tabasco or cayenne peppers, in the 30K-50K Scoville range.) However, there is something a little different about the fruitiness that separates it from the C. chinense peppers. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but it’s a bit of a different fruit profile.
Nice little write-up on aji amarillo here.