The Bell-pepper is early, sweet and pleasant to the taste, and much less acrid or pungent than most of the other sorts. In many places, it is preferred to the Squash-pepper for pickling, not only because of its mildness, but for its thick, fleshy, and tender rind.
In open culture, sow in May, in drills sixteen inches apart, and thin the plants to twelve inches in the drills.
In England, they are pickled as follows: The pods are plucked while green, slit down on one side, and, after the seeds are taken out, immersed in salt and water for twenty-four hours; changing the water at the end of the first twelve. After soaking the full time, they are laid to drain an hour or two; put into bottles or jars; and boiled vinegar, after being allowed to cool, poured over them till they are entirely covered. The jars are then closely stopped for a few weeks, when the pods will be fit for use. In this form, they have been pronounced the best and most wholesome of all pickles.
Bird-Pepper. Vil.
Stem fifteen to eighteen inches high; leaves very small; flowers white, about two-thirds of an inch in diameter; pods erect, sharply conical, an inch and three-quarters long, about half an inch in diameter, and of a brilliant coral-red when ripe.
The variety is late. If sown in the open ground, some of the pods, if the season be favorable, will be fit for use before the plants are destroyed by frost; but few will be fully perfected unless the plants are started under glass.
The Bird-pepper is one of the most piquant of all varieties, and is less valuable as a green pickle than many milder and thicker-fleshed sorts. It is cultivated in rows fourteen inches apart, and ten or twelve inches asunder in the rows. If sown in the open ground, make the rows the same distance apart, and thin the young plants to the same space in the rows.
The "Cayenne Pepper-pot" of commerce is prepared from Bird-pepper in the following manner: "Dry ripe peppers well in the sun, pack them in earthen or stone pots, mixing common flour between every layer of pods, and put all into an oven after the baking of bread, that they may be thoroughly dried; after which, they must be well cleansed from the flour, and reduced to a fine powder. To every ounce of this, add a pound of wheat-flour, and as much leaven as is sufficient for the quantity intended. After this has been properly mixed and wrought, it should be made into small cakes, and baked in the same manner as common cakes of the same size; then cut them into small parts, and bake them again, that they may be as dry and hard as biscuit, which, being powdered and sifted, is to be kept for use."
Cayenne Pepper.
C. frutescens.