He used human tasters in his experiments and recorded the spiciness of various chili peppers. He investigated the pungency of a range of chili peppers while working at the Parke-Davis pharmaceutical company, originally calling the test for heat the “Scoville Organoleptic Test”. The units are names after Wilbur Scoville, who was an American pharmacist. These are the chemical compounds that cause the sensation of heat when chilies are eaten, and it makes sense that the greater the concentration of this compound, the hotter the chili will be. The scale is based on the amount of capsaicinoids present in the chili – with capsaicin being the main constituent. HowStuffWorks may earn a small commission from affiliate links in this article.The Scoville scale is a measure of the heat of the chili pepper and is recorded as Scoville heat units (SHU). That's the key element that the Scoville scale does not measure. That's bad hot spicy, in my opinion," he says. It's so damn hot, but it has no flavor whatsoever. "There are sauces that are made with oleoresin capsaicin that are transformed into an oily substance. Personally, he doesn't stray far from the medium-hot end of the Scoville scale. That's not to say DeWitt is necessarily a fan of super-spicy foods and sauces. "But I can't imagine some foods without them." "Chili peppers don't necessarily help every single food that's out there," he says. Spices - and chilis overall - have become his life. The contest drew 742 entries from 32 states and six different countries earlier this year. He also now runs Fiery Foods & Barbecue Central, the Burn Blog and the annual Scovie Awards, which judges hundreds of products in 16 different categories. He took his newfound interest and became a prolific author. Spiciness in their food gives them some sort of a thrill."Īfter his initial run-in with the green chili stew - after he finished sweating - DeWitt was hooked. "They just stick with what they like to death. You don't hear people say, 'I used to eat hot and spicy, and now I'm eating bland again,'" DeWitt says. And people who do like it hot and spicy tend to eat it constantly. "I think that there's a sort of a psychological addiction going on. If you're asking yourself why someone would eat something that hot, it's a legitimate question. At about 2 million SHUs, the Reaper rates, according to Chili Pepper Madness, somewhere between 175 and 880 times hotter than your garden variety jalapeño. For the truly adventurous, there's the Carolina Reaper, considered the hottest pepper in the world. Above those are peppers like habanero, cayenne and Tabasco. Jalapeños, plenty spicy for a lot of people, rate relatively low on the Scoville scale (roughly around 5,000 SHUs). But that's the absolute bottom of the scale. Chomping down on a bell pepper would not prompt so much as a raised eyebrow or a reach for a glass of water. That stands as the primary means of determining spiciness in food (and the effectiveness, in another use of capsaicin - which is one of the major capsaicinoids - of pepper spray).Ī bell pepper, for example, checks in on the Scoville scale at zero SHUs. The relative "heat" is measured in Scoville heat units (SHUs). Now, scientists extract the heat-inducing chemicals and measure their "pungency" by using High-Performance Liquid Chromatography.
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