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, with uniform heat the circular estimates at 1,000 to 1,500 SHU. 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. Kraft and colleagues (PNAS, 2014) place the domestication of Capsicum annuum in central-east Mexico, from southern Puebla to southern Veracruz, so the Jalapeño grew up close to where the species began. Texas adopted it as the state pepper by concurrent resolution in 1995.

On heat they are closer than reputation suggests, and breeding is the reason. Benigno Villalon at the Texas Agricultural Experiment Station in Weslaco bred the TAM Mild Jalapeño line for virus resistance and low pungency, the first release came in 1983, and the later TAM Mild Jalapeño II measured 1,080 to 1,620 SHU in Texas trials against 19,980 for the hot standard 'Grande'. A TAM-type Jalapeño from a supermarket can land inside the Anaheim's 500 to 2,500 range. A Veracruz-type one will not. Strains of the New Mexican pod grown in New Mexico also run hotter than the California Anaheim.

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.

Sources

• New Mexico State University Circular 706: The Chile Cultivars of New Mexico State University, 1913-2022
• Zegbe Domínguez et al., Cultivo del chile en México (INIFAP / Universidad Autónoma de Zacatecas, 2012)
• Kraft et al., Multiple lines of evidence for the origin of domesticated chili pepper, Capsicum annuum, in Mexico, PNAS 111(17):6165, 2014
• Texas State Library and Archives Commission: Texas State Symbols
• PLANTanswers (Texas A&M horticulture): TAM Mild Jalapeno II release notes