2212. Cayenne Pepper
Dr. Kitchiner says (in his excellent book, "The Cook's Oracle"
):
"We advise all who are fond of cayenne not to think it too much trouble to make it of English chilis,—there is no other way of being sure it is genuine,—and they will obtain a pepper of much finer flavour, without half the heat of the foreign. A hundred large chilis, costing only two shillings, will produce you about two ounces of cayenne,—so it is as cheap as the commonest cayenne. Four hundred chilis, when the stems were taken off, weighed half a pound; and when dried produced a quarter of a pound of cayenne pepper. The following is the way to make it:—Take away the stalks, and put the pods into a cullender; set them before the fire,—they will take full twelve hours to dry;—then put them into a mortar, with one-fourth their weight of salt, and pound them and rub them till they are as fine as possible, and put them into a well-stoppered bottle."
London: Houlston & Sons.