What is Cayenne? Capsicum annuum Benefits and Details

In the medicinal plants sector and the benefits it adds to the immune system finds its place in Cayenne, there's a virus that infects your metabolism to help you in lowering cholesterol and more on many issues. We want to give a scientific and general information about this product which the experts recommend to be consumed on a regular basis.

The cayenne pepper is a type of Capsicum annuum. It is usually a moderately hot chili pepper used to flavor dishes. Cayenne peppers are a group of tapering, 10 to 25 cm long, generally skinny, mostly red colored peppers, often with a curved tip and somewhat rippled skin, which hang from the bush as opposed to growing upright. Most varieties are generally rated at 30,000 to 50,000 Scoville units.

The fruits are generally dried and ground to make the powdered spice of the same name, although cayenne powder may be a blend of different types of peppers, quite often not containing cayenne peppers, and may or may not contain the seeds.

Cayenne is used in cooking spicy dishes either as a powder or in its whole form. It is also used as a herbal supplement.

The word 'cayenne' is thought to be a corruption of the word quiínia (also sometimes spelled kyynha or kynnha) of the Old Tupi language once spoken in Brazil, which means pepper (thus 'cayenne pepper' means 'pepper pepper'). It is probable that the place Cayenne in French Guiana was named after the peppers, not vice versa, although it is commonly claimed that the pepper was named after the city. Culpeper, for example, uses the word 'cayenne pepper' in 1652, and the city was only renamed as such in 1777. It also is possibly named for the Cayenne River.

Nicholas Culpeper in his Complete Herbal, 1653, mentions cayenne pepper as a synonym for what he calls "pepper (guinea)", although he refers to Capsicum peppers in general in his entry.

The cayenne pepper is a type of Capsicum annuum, as are bell peppers, jalapeños, pimientos, and many others. The genus Capsicum is in the nightshade family, (Solanaceae). Cayenne peppers are often said to belong to the frutescens variety, but frutescens peppers are now defined as peppers which have fruit which grow upright on the bush (such as tabasco peppers), thus what is known in English as cayenne peppers are by definition not frutescens.

In the 19th century, modern cayenne peppers were classified as C. longum, this name was later synonymised with C. frutescens. Cayenne powder, however, has generally been made from the bird's eye peppers, in the 19th century classified as C. minimum.