Just as I had cleaned away the last of my prep dishes, and the kitchen looked as though I had effortlessly prepared dinner for the dozen guests who were about to descend in 30 minutes, Jordan called out that he had decided to make a “special” sauce for the roast; a sauce that was going to undermine my plan to escape to the bedroom to put on some eyeliner and clean clothes.

“Where is that pot…oh, there it is!” followed by a large crash. “Where did you hide the flour?” followed by an even more ominous sounding thump. As I gave up on the eyeliner—who would notice by candle light that only one eye was done?—I heard another call that was even more chilling.

“Where do we keep the white pepper?”

White pepper?  “Use black, it won’t make any difference.”

And now with just a hint of a whine, “It will ruin my sauce! Why don’t we have white pepper?”

“If it’s that important, why don’t you just separate out the white peppercorns from the bag of mixed ones?”

The next crash may have been no accident. Fortunately, one of our guests arrived early.

The answer is that I don’t consider white pepper a must-have item. Black pepper did my mother fine, and it has always done me fine. Who really cares if there are little black flecks floating in the béchamel sauce; it won’t cause civilization to collapse.

Jordan spent the rest of the evening treating me as if I had purposely sabotaged his presentation, and even worse, the kitchen looked like I had spent hours slaving away to create dinner, totally ruining my reputation for being an organized host.

A few days later, feeling conciliatory, I bought Jordan a tiny tin of white pepper, but it got me thinking about this life-partner of salt, and wondering how they made it white.

The close connection between pepper and our very own existence cannot be over-stated. If it weren’t for pepper, North America may never have been discovered.

From the time of Constantine in early Roman days to those of Marco Polo, travellers to India and Malaysia were bringing this spice back to Europe, where it quickly became second only to salt in importance. Despite the fact that it had little nutritional or medicinal value, other than as a mild digestive aide, the pungent flavour and heat of the spice was valued for its ability to mask the smell and tastes of spoiled foods and the over-powering flavour of wild game.

Like salt, it was used as currency from time to time, and when the Arabs established a monopoly on the sale of pepper, the European countries began to explore other routes to India, thus beginning the Age of Exploration. Columbus, Magellan, de Gama; they all went in search of an alternate route to India.

Unfortunately, they ran into this big blob of land called the Western hemisphere, and the rest is history. The indigenous people were called “Indians,” and because of their heat, the fruits of the Capsicum family of Central and South America were immediately called “peppers.”

The true peppers are from the Piper nigrum vine, native to the Malabar region of India.  Each fruit produces a long spike of berries. Unripened fruit are green, and when picked are preserved in brine, pickled, or dried. These green peppercorns are the most fruity flavoured and least pungent of all forms of pepper, and are used extensively in French cooking. They are used often in sauces for meats as well as whole in pâté.

As the fruit ripens, it begins to turn red. Just before it reaches full maturity, it is picked, boiled, allowed to ferment until it becomes black, and then dried. It then has the full pungent flavour and heat of the black peppercorn, the form most used throughout the world today.

When the peppercorn is fully ripe it will be red. It is rare to find red peppercorns in this country. The “red” peppercorns in peppercorn mixes are actually dried, pink berries from an unrelated species of plant, with no heat value at all. They are included for aesthetics only.

Which brings us to white peppercorns: white peppercorns are from the same plant as the black and green. Ripe peppercorns are soaked to remove the outer hull, leaving the almost-white interior (really more beige) which is dried and ground into white pepper. It has a milder flavour than black pepper and less heat, making its use often purely cosmetic:  it looks nicer in a white sauce.

Piper nigrum is now grown in Brazil and Mexico and is no longer considered an extravagance, but is still one of the most used spices in cooking the world over.  When a recipe says, “Adjust for seasoning,” they mean salt and pepper.

Black pepper isn’t just for savoury foods. You will often find fruits and sorbets served with cracked pepper, especially in nouvelle cuisine recipes. The pungency of pepper brings out the cooling sweet of strawberries, melons, and other tropical fruit.

Once black or white pepper is ground, it quickly looses its kick which is why serious cooks will always have a pepper mill at hand. This has also led to that annoying habit in restaurants of the waiter standing over you as you have taken your first mouthful of salad, asking if you would like any fresh ground pepper.

By the way, Jordan’s sauce was wonderful, and I am sure that if no one noticed the half-finished eye makeup, no one really noticed or cared about the black flecks.