@DavidRicherby - OK, I have moved this conversation to chat, in part because it was already way OT, but cheifly because this particular mistaken sentiment is yet another misunderstanding that can be traced back to Christopher Columbus, and I feel a duty as someone who cares about history to stop its perpetuation.
Fortunately, someone else has already written the attack, so I can just quote Denver Nicks' excellent history of the Chile in the first chapter of
Hot Sauce Nation, rather than try to compose it myself:
> Columbus's misidentification of the chili as pepper has been a source of much confusion ever since. Though in broad strokes they may have some similarities - it's fair to say that the two are both pungent - black pepper and chili are chemically and botanically distinct.
> Piper nigrum, the scientific name for black pepper, is a vine under the taconomic family Piperacaea that grows natively in the jungles of southern India. ...
> Chilies, on the other hand, fall under the taxonomic family Solanaceae, or nightshade, which includes other important crops like tomatoes and potatoes. Many plants in the family (for example tobacco) contain alkaloids, chemical compounds that are often poisonous and/or psychoactive in humans,
> such as nicotine, caffeine, morphine, cocaine, and the most widely used and abused of them all, found only in the chili pepper: capsaicin.
> Chili peppers have unique tastes and aromas across a wid spectrum, owing to varying combinations of hundres of different chemical compounds. The main compound, though, is called alkylmethoxypyrazine ...., is that classic bell pepper taste.
(skipping past some irrelevant food chemistry here)...
> By stimulating the nerve endings in the mouth and skin, capsaicin triggers the production of a neurotransmitter called substance P, which signals to the brains that the body is in pain, specifically because it is on fire. The same reaction takes place when the nerves come in contact with heat above 109 degrees Fahrenheit....
(more fascinating food chemistry stuff in several paragraphs skipped)
> To reiterate, lest the point is lost: before 1493 no food outside the Western Hemisphere contained any trace of capsaicin, which is to say that the sensation of "spicy" - in the sense that we most often mean it, as the burning sensation that capsaicin simulates - did not exit in the Old World. Thai food was not spicy. Neither were the cuisines of Calabria, Hungary, Senegal, Ethiopia, Malaysia, or Tunisia.
> Sichuan food may have given a tingling sensation, owing to the use of Sichuan peppercorns, which are unrelated to chilies, but neither it nor any other dish in the whole of China was spicy in the way of chilies.
