Piper Cubeba

A member of the piperaceae family, cubeb pepper is the fruit of a tropical climbing vine grown mostly in Java and Sumatra. Compared with India’s voluptuous Tellicherry peppercorn, the cubeb has a distinctly rough-and-ready demeanour with wizened skin and a thin brittle stalk protruding from one end. Not surprisingly, it is also known as the ‘tailed’ pepper, which gives rise to some confusion with other tailed peppers: Ashanti pepper or ‘false cubeb’ (Piper guineense) and Benin pepper (Piper clusii) from Africa, and also tsiperifery, a rare and delicious wild pepper from Madagascar.