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Wild Pepper Isle

row of sample bottles with different coloured contents

Did you know that pepperberry is an acid-base indicator?? That means that it expresses different colours based upon the acidity.  The pictures above show a pinch of pepperberry in each vial of water with different amounts of citric acid or bicarb sodium added to shift the pH of the solution to express different colours.  Pepperberry is red when its acidic and purple when its neutral!   (The numbers on the vials indicates pH).

You may have noticed different colour effects when cooking with pepperberry. Different foods are coloured differently with pepperberry, as shown in the pictures below.

slices of apple with pepperberry as red dots
Apple is acidic enough to turn pepperberry red
Pepperberry in cream
Pepperberry in cream expresses purple

Freeze dried vs Air dried pepperberry

The mechanism by which pepperberry is dried makes a difference! The incredible purple colour in our salt pictured below can only be achieved with freeze dried berries.  In a wet form there are also differences with freeze dried being more purple again but I have found purple colours harder to create and hold on to.   

pepperberry in salt turns it purple colour

A few things I've learnt about colour

  1. Vibrant reds require a pH less than 4.0 and even better if 3.5 or below.  That puts it well withing the range of all jams and jellies, which vary from 3.0 to 3.4.  
  2. A few drops of lemon juice get red colours moving very well and red leaching out of fragments
  3. Purples are harder to achieve perhaps because none of our foods are in the ideal pH range.  
  4. Stir ground pepperberry throughout cream to give a lightly purple / mauve colour.  This can be turned into a pink colour with a little lemon juice. Just a little lemon juice in cream helps to thicken  also!

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