Anaheim vs Jalapeño

The Anaheim is a New Mexican chile that moved. NMSU's Circular 706 records that Fabián García began breeding the New Mexican pod type in 1884 and released New Mexico No. 9 in 1913, selecting for a larger, smoother, fleshier, tapering pod without shoulders, built for canning. It stayed the standard until 1950. The same circular says Anaheim seed originated in New Mexico, was carried to Anaheim, California, and stayed there long enough to pick up site-specific traits and become a variety of its own. Emilio Ortega made that trip in 1894. NMSU is blunt that the whole New Mexican pod type is often mistakenly called Anaheim. Anaheim is one cultivar inside it.

The Jalapeño is older and stayed home until it went everywhere. The INIFAP volume Cultivo del chile en México says the name comes from Jalapa, Veracruz, where it was once grown and shipped to the rest of the country, and that Mexico City called it cuaresmeño because it was eaten during Lent. C. annuum was domesticated in central-east Mexico, from southern Puebla to southern Veracruz (Kraft et al. 2014), so the Jalapeño grew up close to where the species began. Texas adopted it as the state pepper by concurrent resolution in 1995.

In use they part company on shape. The Anaheim is long and thick walled enough to roast, peel and stuff, which is why it is the everyday chile relleno pepper and the base of green chile sauce, and its red pods dry into chile seco del norte. The Jalapeño is short and eaten green and raw, pickled en escabeche, or ripened red and smoke-dried into chipotle, a word INIFAP traces to Nahuatl chilli and poctli, smoke. One is a vegetable you cook around. The other is a condiment you cook with.