Portal:Food/Selected ingredient/32
.jpg)
Paprika is a spice made from dried and ground red peppers, traditionally capsicum annuum. It can have varying levels of heat, but the peppers used for even hot paprika tend to be milder and have thinner flesh than those used to produce chili powder. The milder, sweet paprika is mostly composed of the fruit of the pepper with most of the seeds removed; whereas some seeds and stalks are retained in the peppers used for hotter paprika.
Paprika, like all capsicum varieties and their derivatives, is descended from wild ancestors from the Amazonas, cultivated in ancient times in South, Central and North America, in particular central Mexico. The peppers were introduced to Europe, via Spain and Portugal, in the sixteenth century. The trade in paprika expanded from the Iberian Peninsula to Africa and Asia and ultimately reached central Europe through the Balkans. (Full article...)