Recipe
Seasoning salt with Tasmanian pepper
- Herb:
- Mountain pepper Tasmannia lanceolata
- Method:
- Culinary use
- Plant part:
- Fruit
About 10 minBeginnerRecipe science profile
Procedure
- Crush a teaspoon of dried Tasmanian pepperberries coarsely in a mortar — they stain purple.
- Mix with 100 g of coarse sea salt and a teaspoon of crushed lemon myrtle leaf or dried lemon zest.
- Add a teaspoon of ground Tasmanian pepper leaf for a gentler heat if you like.
- Keep in a closed jar; use on fish, steak, roast potatoes or in butter.
Extraction
- Herb:
- 1 teaspoon of dried berries per 100 g of mixture
- Solvent:
- no extraction — crushing and mixing with sea salt and lemon myrtle
- Shelf life:
- 6 months in a sealed jar
- Target compounds:
- polygodial (a pungent sesquiterpene) and berry anthocyanins are released by crushing
Notes
A kitchen recipe with no particular risks; the berries are very hot and slightly numb the tongue, so dose them by the corn. It is neither pepper nor related to the pepper vine.
Why it works
The berries' heat comes from polygodial, a sesquiterpene dialdehyde that acts on the tongue unlike pepper's piperine or chilli's capsaicin — first warming, then lightly numbing. Just et al. isolated it from the plant as a starting material for synthesis; the catalogue holds no health effects.
Literature
- Just J, Jordan TB, Paull B, Bissember AC, Smith JA (2015): Practical isolation of polygodial from Tasmannia lanceolata. Org Biomol Chem 13:11200–11207 — Polygodial as the main pungent constituent; a chemical source, not a health source.
Related
Mountain pepper — Herb card
Culinary use — Processing method detail