or pimento Any of various mild peppers of the genus Capsicum that have distinctive flavour but lack pungency, including the European paprikas. A common flavouring in Hungarian dishes, paprika is made by grinding dried peppers. The term pimento sometimes refers to allspice because early Spanish explorers of the West Indies and Central America mistook the highly aromatic berries of the tropical allspice tree for a type of pepper and called it pimenta