Paprika

Source=Fruit from a sweet pepper plant, Capiscum annum
Flavor=Sweet to hot, somewhat bitter
Best used=Dried and ground
Cooking use=In Hungarian dishes including goulash, in soups, in potato or egg salad

Paprika comes from dried and ground chile peppers, capsicum annuum, which originated in southern Mexico. Capsicum is a member of the nightshade family which also includes potatoes and tomatoes. Christopher Columbus is credited with bringing the chile to Europe. Aristocrats originally cultivated capsicum as ornamental plants until eventually their culinary value was recognized. By the 1560's, these peppers had reached the Balkans where they were called peperke or paparka. The peppers soon migrated to Hungary, now renowned for its paprika. The Szeged and Kalocsa regions of Hungary are the most well-known producers of sweet paprika. The Paprika Museum makes its home in Kalocsa, and the city celebrates its famous spice with the Paprika Festival each year in October.
It wasn't until the mid-1900s that paprika stepped into the limelight of Western kitchens. Spain, South America, Mediterranean regions, India, and California join Hungary as major producers of paprika. Paprika is used as a coloring agent in foods and cosmetics. Its inclusion in foods fed to zoo flamingos help them keep their pink plumage bright and beautiful.
Paprika is unusually high in vitamin C, discovered by Hungary's Nobel prize-winning Professor Szent Gyorgyi who first discovered the vitamin in paprika chile peppers. The capsicum peppers used for paprika contain six to nine times as much vitamin C as tomatoes by weight. High heat leaches the vitamins from peppers, thus commercially-dried peppers are not as nutritious as those dried naturally in the sun. As an antibacterial agent and stimulant, paprika can help normalize blood pressure, improve circulation, and increase the production of saliva and stomach acids to aid digestion.