I know that I’m in the presence of ancient culinary history when I sit down in an unpretentious Colombian or Venezuelan restaurant or walk into a country kitchen and see a bottle of vinegar sharpened with the bite of a few hundred tiny, scorching hot peppers. It could be a Coke or Pepsi bottle on the table with holes punched in the cap. But what the bottle holds is a link with the cuisine that was already in place when Columbus and his crew first broke casabe (the ubiquitous flatbread made from yuca flour) with their Taíno hosts on Hispaniola during that first expedition in 1492.
Thousands of years ago, these miniature, firey peppers reached the eastern Amazonian-Orinocan region from their place of origin in Bolivia. They entered the cuisine of civilizations in the lands that became northeastern Brazil, Venezuela, and Colombia as flavorings for the local vinegar fermented from yuca. Pepper vinegar, as an indispensable condiment for sprinkling over casabe, starchy vegetables, meat, and fish, accompanied people from the South American river basin societies when they moved to the Caribbean islands. Its use today persists throughout a broad region. I, a Cuban exile, feel an instant surge of recognition at first glimpse of the humble recycled bottle dispensing pepper vinegar anywhere in the Latin American tropics.
The truth is that all of us whose cuisines were touched by the ways of the island Taínos like acidic flavors in, or on, our food. We respond with familiar recognition to the ancient combination of acidity and stinging heat—though after the conquest we became the heirs of Spanish as well as indigenous food traditions. Vinegar from yuca has not disappeared as a commercial product. But depending on our different backgrounds, we may enjoy vinegar from apple cider or wine as well as today’s most popular homemade version, pineapple vinegar, made from the peels trimmed off the fruit. But the principle hasn’t changed since pre-Hispanic times: acid plus capsaicin heat.
This way of embracing capsicums sets apart the cuisines of northeastern South America and the Greater Antilles from those of other regions. In Central America and the Andean countries, people like pepper heat deeply infused into main-dish cooking sauces as well as some table sauces. People in the eastern river basins and the islands, on the other hand, do very little cooking with hot peppers. It comes naturally to us to grab a few handfuls of some tiny, stinging wild or loosely domesticated peppers, bruise them lightly to help release the heat, fit them into a jar or bottle, and cover them with vinegar. We reach for the steeped pepper vinegar to season anything from cooked starch tubers to grilled meats. When the vinegar level drops, we simply top up the bottle with some more. It takes many steepings for the peppers to lose their pungency.
Do not think that all containers for our beloved pepper vinegar are recycled soda bottles, even though this is emblematic of Latin American thrift and practicality. Nor does the steeped condiment always consist of just vinegar and peppers. Especially in Venezuela, well-to-do families pride themselves on the beauty of their ajiceros—elegant glass flasks or cruets filled with colorful, carefully arranged displays of peppers and other seasoning ingredients (often briefly cooked), such as sliced onions, carrots, garlic, and whole spices. Every region of the country has its own cherished variations. There is also a family of wonderful Venezuelan pepper-laced condiments where the basic liquid is milk or whey, not vinegar. I fell in love with this surprising combination after encountering it in the Orinoco and in the Andes and have been experimenting with different versions ever since.
I believe that the whole family of hot, vinegary condiments now adored by millions of US diners is a direct descendant of this general tradition. Even the smell of Tabasco sauce has a recognizable connection with the smell of South American frutescens peppers ripened in my garden. The Caribbean slave trade was the likely route of transmission for the family of pepper vinegar sauces, as well as the pepper wine that came to the North American colonies, and evidence of that remains in parts of the American South.
