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In legal parlance, a peppercorn is a metaphor for a very small cash payment or other nominal consideration, used to satisfy the requirements for the creation of a legal contract. It is featured in Chappell & Co Ltd v Nestle Co Ltd ([1960] AC 87), an important English contract law case where the House of Lords stated that "a peppercorn does not cease to be good consideration if it is established that the promisee does not like pepper and will throw away the corn".[1][2] However, the cited passage is mere dicta, and not the basis for the decision.