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A combination of peppercorns is a nice change of pace for the tabletop pepper grinder. Black, white and green peppercorns all start from the same berry but are picked at different times and dried in different ways, allowing each to develop its own distinctive flavor.
Black Peppercorns are made from mature but unripe berries, still green and rich in aromatics. The berries are then blanched for a minute to clean them and rupture the cells of the fruit layer to speed the work of the browning enzymes. They are finally sun or machine dried which darkens the outer fruit layer.
White peppercorns consist of the pepper seed only without the outer fruit layer. It is made from fully ripe berries which are soaked in water for a week to allow the fruit layer to be degraded, then rubbed and dried.
Green Peppercorns are made from berried harvested a week or more before they would otherwise begin to ripen. The berries are simply preserved by brining, dehydration, freeze drying, or sulfur dioxide.
Pink Pepper is a rarity made by preserving just ripened red berries in brine and vinegar. Pink Peppercorns, however, are a semi ripe berry of another species of pepper tree and are not a true peppercorn. Used more ornamentally than for flavor they are what you find in a peppercorn grinding mix.
Sichuan Peppercorns (Chinese version) and Sansho Peppercorns (Japanese version) offer an aromatic lemony citrus burst from the dried fruit rinds. The pungent compounds come from the same family as the black peppercorn and chilies. These compounds, however, produce a tingling, buzzing, numbing sensation. The Chinese toast the peppercorns, which overrides the citrus notes with a woody flavor. The Japanese leave the citrus notes intact to balance the fattiness of fish.
