Sichuan pepper — or “peppercorn” — is a misnomer on all counts. It’s not a true peppercorn, not related to black pepper, and not limited to Sichuan. Instead, it comes from the husk of a citrus-family berry, prized for its bright, citrusy tingle rather than peppery heat, and grown across China and beyond.
In English, the word “pepper” got used for pretty much everything spicy. Black pepper — the classic kind made from the black pepper plant’s dried berries, called peppercorns — came first in the Western world. When chili peppers arrived from the Americas, English speakers called them pepper too, even though they’re actually relatives of tomatoes and eggplants. Later, Sichuan pepper, grown in China for thousands of years, got lumped in as well. Botanically it’s a bit messy, but the name stuck.
So where did this whole naming kerfuffle begin?
Let’s Start With Peppercorn: What Exactly Is a Peppercorn?
Let’s start with the most common misnomer: peppercorn.
Image: 1) Green black pepper berries picked unripe are dried into (2) black peppercorns. Grind them into (3) black pepper; or, strip away the skin leaving the seed for (4) white pepper — the same berry, just processed differently.
A true peppercorn is the dried berry of the black pepper vine, Piper nigrum.
Native to India’s Malabar Coast, and imported to the West since Greek and Roman times, the black pepper vine climbs and fruits in clusters of small green berries.
These little berries, processed into black, white, or whole peppercorns, became the Western world’s first “pepper.” Pungent, earthy, and spicy, they were so prized they were literally worth their weight in gold.
By 1439, a single pound in England cost more than two days’ wages. No wonder pepper practically financed the Age of Exploration — you could say Columbus didn’t sail the ocean blue in search of America, but in search of a cheaper way to season his stew. (Thankfully, our Sichuan peppers are still premium — but you don’t need to sail halfway around the world or forgo two days’ wages to afford them.)
So how exactly did black pepper end up lending its name to the chili pepper?
By the Way… Here Comes the Red Hot Chili Pepper
When Columbus set sail in 1492, he literally carried black peppercorns with him, so the people he met could point him toward more of the prized spice.
That’s how valuable black pepper was. It lured explorers across oceans in every direction. Decades earlier, Zheng He’s famed 15th-century Ming dynasty treasure voyages even detoured to India’s Malabar Coast for black pepper, while port cities across Malaysia and Indonesia thrived on the pepper trade centuries before coffee or Europeans arrived.
But when Columbus stumbled into the New World instead of Asia, he found fiery red pods that burned like pepper, yet were something entirely different. These “chili peppers” came from the nightshade family (Capsicum annuum), botanical cousins of tomatoes, potatoes, and eggplants.
Their heat comes from capsaicin, not the piperine of black pepper. Two plants, two families, two very different flavor sensations — yet both carried the same “pepper” name thanks to Columbus’s mislabeling and the world’s willingness to sail with it.
And the story didn’t end there. Another “pepper” was waiting in the wings — one that didn’t burn like chili or bite like black pepper, but instead delivered a citrusy buzz all its own. Enter Sichuan pepper.
Huajiao Enters the Chat: China’s Misnamed “Pepper”
Long before black pepper (Piper nigrum) reached China, and centuries before chili peppers (Capsicum annuum) crossed the oceans from the Americas, Sichuan pepper (Zanthoxylum) was already buzzing on Chinese tongues.
Known as flower pepper, prickly ash, or hua jiao, this native spice has flavored Chinese cooking for millennia. Archaeological finds trace it as far back as 6300 BCE, making it one of East Asia’s oldest known spices.
As food writer Fuchsia Dunlop recounts in her memoir Shark’s Fin and Sichuan Pepper (2008), it even appears in the ancient Book of Songs, where its shiny seeds symbolized fertility. She notes that Han dynasty palaces plastered concubines’ chambers with mud mixed with Sichuan pepper in hopes of producing heirs, while rural people exchanged bunches as love tokens — showing how Sichuan pepper was bound up with symbolism and desire as much as taste.
Yet for all its ancient pedigree, it still acquired the misnomers “pepper” and “peppercorn.”
Myth #1: Sichuan “pepper” isn’t technically a pepper or peppercorn
Botanically, Sichuan pepper belongs to the Rutaceae family — the same family as citrus — not to the black pepper or chili pepper families. It’s closer to an orange tree than a pepper vine or chili pepper — which helps explain its bright, lemony aroma.
And the “peppercorn” label? Another misnomer. With black pepper, the peppercorn comes from the whole unripe berry — dried with skin and seed together. With Sichuan pepper, we throw away the seed (hard, gritty, and bitter) and use only the papery husk of the berry, which carries the aromatic oils and the famous numbing buzz.
Myth #2: Sichuan “pepper” isn’t spicy
Image: While we love the spicy chili pepper, we often have to clarify: we’re not a hot sauce company or a chili pepper company — our huajiao bring the tingly buzz and sensation, not the burn.
There’s more: Sichuan pepper is not actually even hot or spicy. Unlike chili peppers, Sichuan pepper contains no capsaicin. Its power lies in hydroxy-α-sanshool, the compound that delivers that unmistakable tingling, buzzing sensation — floral, citrusy, numbing, but not “spicy” or “hot” in the chili-heat sense. And while the Scoville scale measures capsaicin heat, there’s no Scoville-style rating for tingliness — at least not yet.
Myth #3: Sichuan “pepper” isn’t just from Sichuan
To make matters even more confusing, Sichuan pepper isn’t just grown in Sichuan. It grows across much of China — in Chongqing, Guizhou, Yunnan, Gansu, and Shanxi — thriving in mountainous terrain with sultry summers and cold winters.
Myth #4: Sichuan “pepper” isn’t all red
Image: Sichuan “pepper” comes in many shades of tingle — (1) red huājiāo (Z. bungeanum), warm and aromatic; (2) green (Z. armatum), bright and citrusy; (3) sanshō (Z. piperitum), zesty with a minty snap; (4) mắc khén (Z. rhetsa), wild and smoky.
There are over 200 recognized species of Zanthoxylum, but just a handful make it into our spice jars.
Zanthoxylum bungeanum is the classic red Sichuan pepper most people know — aromatic, warm, and widely sold in markets across China and abroad.
Green Sichuan pepper (Zanthoxylum armatum) is less known: brighter and more citrus-forward with a quick, sparkling tingle — see our detailed Green vs. Red guide.
Japan’s sanshō (Zanthoxylum piperitum) is zestier still — think yuzu zest with a light minty-pine snap. It’s traditionally sprinkled over rich dishes like unagi kabayaki to cut through the fat.
If red Sichuan pepper is red wine and green Sichuan pepper is white wine, then sanshō is like sparkling wine — bright, sparkling, and palate-cleansing.
And that’s not all — other culinary Zanthoxylum cousins like Nepal’s timur and Vietnam’s mắc khén deserve their own deep dive, but that’s a rabbit hole for another nerdy post.
Why Do We Call Huajiao “Sichuan Pepper” then?
As with many things, you can thank the English for the confusion.
Sichuan pepper’s path from East to West goes back to the 11th century, when Ibn Sīnā (Avicenna) — a Persian philosopher and doctor — wrote about it using the Arabic word fagara. From there, the word slipped into Latin as Fagara, and later into botany as Zanthoxylum.
Early English writers called it “Chinese pepper” or “pepperwort.” By 1871, physician F. Porter Smith also noted its Chinese name 蜀椒 (‘Sichuan pepper’).
The English label “Sichuan” or originally “Szechuan pepper” (under the outdated Wade–Giles romanization) only started showing up in the late 1800s. That’s when the name stuck.
So why the confusion? In English, “pepper” became a catch-all for spicy things — like calling allspice “Jamaica pepper.”
And calling it “peppercorn” makes it worse. With huājiāo, we use only the papery husk of the berry, not the seed. A true peppercorn (Piper nigrum) is the whole dried berry including seed — or just the seed, in the case of white pepper.
In short, an ancient Chinese spice ended up with a modern English label that points to the wrong plant and the wrong plant part.
Should we just call it huajiao (花椒)?
Image: Pepper, peppercorn, huajiao… call me by your name, and I’ll call you by mine. At the table, that name is delicious.
Sichuan pepper” is useful for recognition, but it’s misleading — wrong family, wrong plant part, and it suggests it’s chili-hot or only from Sichuan. Huajiao is clearer, authentic, and covers both the red and green varieties. After all, you wouldn’t call wasabi Japanese horseradish, right?
We’ll still use “Sichuan pepper” or even “Szechuan pepper” when it helps people find it, but if we had our way, we’d just call it huajiao. And hey — we’re a business after all. Whether you search for Sichuan pepper, Szechuan peppercorn, or huajiao, we’ll happily claim it all (thanks, Google SEO).
And if you’ve made it this far, your taste buds must be salivating… or you’re a pepper nerd like us. Either way, we’ve got you covered!
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