Dr. Jean Andrews: The Pepper Lady
It’s almost hard to remember that there was once a time, even here in Texas, when the subject of peppers was not hot. But until the Seventies, the attention paid to peppers was minimal, to say the least. Although segments of the New World population have cultivated, consumed, and appreciated peppers since the time of the Aztecs, until relatively recently, peppers certainly were not celebrated in U.S. restaurants, cookbooks, food television, or even hot sauce festivals.While there are many, many reasons why hot peppers have come into their own and have blossomed into objects of public interest and enjoyment, one of those reasons can be directly attributed to Austin’s own Dr. Jean Andrews, aka “The Pepper Lady,” a title she has, in fact, trademarked. Along with numerous other books, Dr. Andrews is the author and illustrator of two definitive texts on the subject — Peppers: The Domesticated Capsicums (1984, 1995) and The Pepper Trail: History and Recipes From Around the World (1999).
I recently caught up with Dr. Andrews in her West Austin home, a visually and tactilely astonishing space that is completely filled with books, plants, shells, paintings, textiles, antiques, and artifacts from around the world. A diminutive, outspoken, and endlessly energetic septuagenarian who leads a life of travel, writing, research, painting, and philanthropy that exhausted me just hearing about it, Dr. Andrews explained how she became interested in peppers.
As a native of Kingsville in South Texas and a longtime cook and gardener in Corpus Christi, she had been growing, preserving, and developing recipes for peppers for many years. Later, in 1976, she was finishing up a doctorate in art at the University of North Texas (begun at age 50, three years before). “You know, my life didn’t really begin until after I was 45,” she said.
While casting about for a dissertation subject, she learned that the pepper genus, Capsicum, had never been illustrated. In fact, as she explored the subject, she learned that the pepper genus was not even defined until the Fifties, and that there was very little literature published on the topic. While she ultimately chose a different area for her doctoral research, her interest in painting peppers was irrevocably piqued, and in her spare time, while teaching art, she bought textbooks and began to teach herself botany to properly prepare for the task.
Although a debilitating eye injury slowed her down for a few years, Dr. Andrews remained committed to her botanical illustration project, and as she recovered, she began the work. “Because my vision was impaired and I had to work so slowly, it took me five years to complete the paintings, at a rate of 5 or 6 per year,” she told me. “I only worked from live specimens, so at times I was growing as many as 81 varieties of peppers. Although I was not formally scientifically trained, once the experts — botanists and scholars at UT and other places — understood what I was doing, they were very helpful to me and supportive of my work; I was accomplishing something that hadn’t been done before.”
The results of this labor of love, scholarship, and ultimate dedication were the 34 gorgeous botanical paintings of pepper varieties that appear in Peppers: The Domesticated Capsicums, along with her comprehensive and erudite text that includes pepper history, science, cultivation, and culinary and medicinal uses.
The consequence of this Herculean endeavor was that Dr. Andrews is recognized as a world authority on the subject of peppers, and she became a Visiting Scholar in Botany at the University of Texas and a staff member at the Herbarium there. In 1983, she endowed two visiting professorships at UT — one in Human Nutrition and one in Economic Botany.
After writing some smaller works on pepper subjects (along with several books on two other abiding interests, Gulf Coast shells and wildflowers), in 1999 Dr. Andrews published a companion volume to Peppers, titled The Pepper Trail: History and Recipes From Around the World. This is an anthropological and sociological study of the early spice trade, and about the global progress of peppers through various cultures and cuisines. The book contains a panoply of pepper recipes contributed by an impressive assortment of nationally known chefs. In 2000, it won the IACP Jane Grigson Award for Distinguished Scholarship. Together, the two volumes are commonly recognized as the ultimate source for pepper information.
I asked Dr. Andrews about the original pepper paintings for the botanical plates in the two books. She explained that she had donated them (along with the paintings for her American Wildflower Florilegium volume) to the School of Visual Arts at the University of North Texas. These paintings can be purchased from the school, with the proceeds contributing to the Jean Andrews Scholarship for undergraduate art students, which she endowed in honor of her children.
Currently, Dr. Andrews is not working with peppers, but is busy cataloging her enormous collection of textiles from around the world, in preparation for a museum exhibit in 2002 at the University of North Texas, and for their new home in the Jean Andrews Textile Research Room, at North Texas. In the next few months, she will be making her 20th trip to Costa Rica, traveling to the Canary Islands and inland China, snorkeling in the Red Sea, and sailing the Persian Gulf. She also plans to focus time and energy on her painting.
When I asked if there were more peppers in her future, she smiled and said, “I think perhaps I’ve done it. In my work, I followed peppers clear around the world, where they started, where they went, where they became appreciated, how they were used, what effect they had on cuisines. Yes, I think I’ve done it.”
This article appears in August 24 • 2001.
