Chile peppers are fruits of plants in the Capsicum genus, which can be traced back to the mountainous regions of Bolivia and Brazil circa 7500 BC. Though it’s hard to imagine Chinese, Korean, or Indian cuisines without the intense heat of fresh or dried peppers, it wasn’t until relatively recently that chile peppers came into more global use. In China, for instance, the first documented recipes to include chile peppers didn’t surface until 1790 (View Highlight)