Is there an existing authorative definition of the cryptographic term 'pepper' I can attempt to define the term 'pepper' as:


  In cryptography, a pepper is a something that is added to another
  value (for example a password) prior to a the value being hashed using
  a cryptographic hash function. A pepper can be added to a password in
  addition to a salt value. A pepper performs a similar role to a salt,
  however whereas a salt is commonly stored alongside the value being
  hashed, for something to be defined as a pepper, it should meet one of
  the following criteria that define it a more carefully hidden 'secret'
  than the salt value:
  
  
  The pepper is held separately from the value to be hashed
  The pepper is randomly generated for each value to be hashed (within a limited
  set of values), and is never stored. When data is tested against a
  hashed value for a match, this is done by iterating through the set of
  values valid for the pepper, and each one in turn is added to the data
  to be tested (usually by suffixing it to the data), before the
  cryptographic hash function is run on the combined value.
  


Is there a resource that can verify this as an authorative meaning of the term or otherwise? The articles I'm seeing on Goole aren't very authorative on the meaning of the term and are mutually contradictory in cases, so I'm deriving the definition above based on what's seemingly common in the software development community's understanding of the term 'pepper'.
I have found one source that claims to have invented the word &quot;pepper&quot;.
-- But this doesn't mean that they were the first or the only inventors. I guess it may have been invented and reinvented several times.
1999 Paper
Kedem, G., &amp; Ishihara, Y. (1999, August 23-26). Brute Force Attack on UNIX
Passwords with SIMD Computer. Paper presented at the 8th USENIX Security
Symposium, Washington, DC.
They invent &quot;pepper&quot; on page 6 like this: (line breaks added for readability)

The main idea is to add random bits to the password encryption, similar to the “salt” bits that are currently used to protect passwords against dictionary attacks.
We call the new bits: “pepper” bits. Unlike the “salt” bits that are saved with the encrypted password, the pepper bits are used to encrypt the password, but are never saved.

But I think there are likely to be many different definitions of the term &quot;pepper&quot;, simply because people know what &quot;salt&quot; is and like to extend analogies.
I don't think K&amp;I's 1999 definition ever really caught on. To me at least, &quot;pepper&quot; is a cryptographic secret, that is stored but stored somewhere else than the salt.