Aleppo pepper

• pul biber

  Turkish

  Aleppo pepper is a particular pul biber. Turkish shops sell several, and Maras and Urfa are noticeably different from each other.

• filfil halabi

  Arabic

Moderately hot, fruity and slightly salty, with a warmth that arrives late and spreads rather than striking. The fruitiness is the distinguishing quality: it tastes of dried fruit and sun as much as of chilli, and that is what makes it usable in quantity where a hotter flake would not be.

Fruity and faintly raisiny, with a sun-dried sweetness and a light tomato-skin note. Very little sharpness — it does not catch the throat as ground cayenne does.

Deep crimson to brick red, coarse and slightly damp-looking, with flakes that clump a little and leave colour on the fingers. A dry, bright orange, free-flowing flake is a different product.

Coarse, slightly moist flakes that clump and do not pour freely. The oil and salt content is why, and a jar that flows like sand has either been dried differently or has dried out.

• Capsaicin and dihydrocapsaicin — The pungency, at a moderate concentration by chilli standards. Their proportion is what the Scoville range measures.
• Carotenoids — capsanthin and capsorubin — The deep crimson, and the compounds that fade first in light. Colour loss tracks age closely here.
• Sugars and Maillard products from slow sun drying — The fruity, raisiny sweetness that distinguishes this from a generic flake. Fast kiln drying does not develop them in the same way.

Use more of it than you would use of ordinary chilli flakes, and use it earlier. The heat is moderate and slow, the flavour is fruity, and the point is to season with it rather than to sharpen a dish — a tablespoon in a stew is normal. Warm it in oil or butter when you want the colour and the flavour through a dish, because both the carotenoids and the capsaicin are fat-soluble and the fat carries them; keep the heat moderate, since the sugars and oil in the flake scorch faster than a dry chilli would. Scatter it over a finished dish when you want the texture visible. And taste before you salt, because most Aleppo pepper carries a substantial amount of salt already and the proportion is never stated.

Muhammara above all, then grilled and roasted meat, kebabs, stews, roast vegetables, eggs, hummus, labneh and flatbread. It is equally a cooking spice and a table condiment, and it is unusual among chillies in being used by the spoonful rather than the pinch. It works with lamb, chicken, aubergine, tomato, red pepper, walnut, yoghurt, olive oil, eggs and bulgur, and alongside sumac, cumin, coriander seed, garlic and mint.

• blooming — Warmed in oil or butter, which is the classic use — the carotenoids and capsaicin are both fat-soluble, so the fat turns red and carries both through the dish. Keep the heat moderate; the sugars scorch and turn bitter faster than a drier flake would.
• grinding — Already a coarse flake, and grinding it finer is a mistake — the texture is part of what distinguishes it from paprika, and a powder cakes because of the oil and salt it carries.
• baking — Scattered on breads and pastries before baking, as in the Levantine and Turkish traditions, where oven heat is gentle enough not to scorch it.
• toasting — Not dry-toasted. The oil and sugar content means it burns rather than toasting, and burnt chilli is acrid.

Judge the colour and then the smell, and expect the smell to be the more honest of the two. Capsaicin is not volatile and an old Aleppo pepper is exactly as hot as a fresh one — what it has lost is the fruitiness that made it worth choosing over ordinary chilli flakes. If it smells of nothing much and tastes only hot and salty, it has become a generic flake.

• Dull brown-orange rather than deep crimson
• Heat with no fruitiness behind it
• A stale oily smell, or caking into a solid mass

• Photo-bleaching of capsanthin and the other carotenoids, dulling the crimson
• Oxidation of the oil fraction towards a stale, faintly rancid note
• Loss of the fruity aroma, leaving heat and salt
• Moisture uptake and caking around the salt

There is only really one form, and the buying decision is about quality rather than grind. Look for deep crimson, few seeds and a slightly moist flake, and treat a bone-dry bright-orange product with suspicion — it has either been kiln-dried or has sat in the light. Buy small quantities and keep the jar dark, because the colour and the fruitiness both go within months while the heat does not, and a faded Aleppo pepper is indistinguishable in use from ordinary chilli flakes. Do not pay a premium for the word Aleppo: most of the supply is Turkish Maraş and has been since 2011, and the good Turkish product is better than a poor jar with the right name on it.

• Deep crimson rather than bright orange or dull brown, and slightly damp-looking rather than free-flowing.
• Few visible seeds — seed content is the clearest difference between a good jar and a cheap one.
• A fruity, raisiny smell rather than a merely hot one.
• A short ingredient list. Salt is traditional and expected; a long list or a stated colouring is not.

No consumer grade exists. The meaningful variables are seed content, salt proportion and drying method, and none of them appears on a label — appearance and smell do the work. Expect most product to be Turkish whatever the name on the jar says.

Solanaceae

An annual Capsicum annuum cultivar of the northern Syrian and southern Turkish plain, bearing elongated fruit that ripens to deep crimson. It is a landrace group rather than a single defined cultivar, which is part of why the product varies.

The region around Aleppo in northern Syria and across the border into southern Turkey, where the cultivars and the processing both developed. Capsicum itself is American and reached the region after the Columbian exchange, so the spice as such is a few centuries old rather than ancient.

• Turkey — major producer. Now the dominant source. The Maraş and Urfa districts supply most of what reaches international markets under the Aleppo name.
• Syria — historic producer. The origin of the name and the style. Production and export were severely disrupted from 2011 onward, and the supply that reaches Western markets today is largely not Syrian.

Picked fully ripe and deep red. Colour and sugar both peak at full ripeness, and the fruitiness the spice is valued for depends on it.

1. Ripening and picking — Fruit left to ripen fully to deep crimson before picking.
2. Sun drying — Split and sun-dried in the open, traditionally on rooftops and terraces, over several days.Why: Slow drying preserves the colour and concentrates the sugars.
3. Deseeding — Seeds and stems removed before flaking in better-quality production, and left in cheaper product.Why: Seeds contribute heat without flavour and make the flake dry and gritty; their proportion is the clearest quality difference between two jars.
4. Coarse grinding with salt and oil — Crushed to a coarse flake, traditionally with a proportion of salt and sometimes olive oil, which is why the flakes look and feel slightly damp.Why: The salt and oil are a preservation method and also part of the character — a bone-dry Aleppo flake is either very fresh or not made this way.

No published consumer grade. Commercial quality turns on colour, seed content, salt and oil proportion and moisture. Salt content in particular varies substantially between producers and is rarely declared.

The recorded risks are heavy salt loading to add weight, seed and stem bulking, colouring, and — the one specific to this spice — geographic misdescription, since most product sold as Aleppo pepper is now Turkish. Sudan dyes and other unauthorised colourants have been a documented problem in ground chilli products generally.

Grown as an annual field crop, largely by smallholders, and harvested ripe rather than green.

Hot dry summers with reliable sun for open-air drying, on the plains either side of the Syrian-Turkish border. The drying weather is as much a part of the product as the cultivar.

A comparatively young spice on an old trade route. Capsicum reached the eastern Mediterranean after the Columbian exchange and was absorbed into a cuisine that already had a long-established pepper habit, and the Aleppo style — ripe fruit, slow sun drying, coarse flaking with salt — developed there over the following centuries. Aleppo was a major commercial city on the caravan routes long before the chilli arrived, and the spice carries the city’s name because of what the city was rather than because the plant is from there.

The trade in this spice was severely disrupted by the Syrian war from 2011, and the supply reaching Western markets shifted substantially to Turkish production from the Maraş and Urfa districts. Most jars sold as Aleppo pepper today are Turkish. SpiceHQ records this because the name has become a style rather than an origin, and a shopper is entitled to know that.