The Duchess’s cook uses too much pepper in the soup, making everyone sneeze. Alice notices the excessive seasoning when she enters the Duchess’s chaotic kitchen in the chapter “Pig and Pepper.” The pepper affects Alice, the Duchess, and the Duchess’s baby, while the cook and the grinning Cheshire Cat remain unaffected.
The scene combines slapstick with Carroll’s fondness for absurd cause and effect. The cook is not merely careless with seasoning: she throws kitchen objects, including fire-irons, saucepans, plates, and dishes, at the Duchess and baby. The pepper-filled soup adds to the disorder and gives the chapter its title.
Pepper also returns as a joke during the trial near the end of the book. When the King of Hearts asks the cook what the stolen tarts are made of, she answers “pepper.” This reinforces the character’s association with the spice and with Wonderland’s deliberately nonsensical logic.