The dried, unripe berries (peppercorns) of the Piper nigrum plant which are commonly used as a spice and seasoning. They are either used whole, or in a ground or crushed form.
scintilla
noun
A small spark or flash.
A small or trace amount.
How often have the words black pepper and scintilla occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )