Scoville heat scale: what is it and what does it contain? (10 photos)

Everyone has had to try something spicy once in their life. However, who even thought of eating pepper?





It turns out that the Indians even thought of using chili pepper (translated from Aztec as red) in the sacred drink cocoaatl. The Indians believed that this hot thing was a gift from the Sun God.



The Aztecs were very fond of hot chocolate with chili. Oh times...

Strange concepts, of course, but even stranger is that the love for spicy things has passed through millennia, and in 1912, the American chemist Wilbur Scoville created a whole table determining the hotness of peppers. And no, he didn't sample every strain and measure the level of pain and suffering. Since Scoville was a chemist, he took measurements in a scientific way.





Actually, Wilbur Scoville

The spiciness of the pepper is affected by the amount of capsaicin, the level of which is determined by liquid chromatography - a method of separating substances in liquid. The process is, of course, scientific, but the data varies slightly. And okay, you can still distinguish something that is burning from something that is not burning anyway.

Now to the numbers. Pure capsaicin, oddly enough, is not a source of pain and suffering. It contains 16,000,000 heat units, which is no match for the 16,000,000,000 heat units in Resiniferatoxin (capitalized in deference to what Satan himself fears). Strange, but this creature is of very natural origin and is taken from milkweed resiniferous, growing in Morocco.



Actually, the Scoville scale

As for peppers, they are much inferior to pure substances, but that does not stop them from killing your taste buds. The hottest of all varieties is Pepper X, containing 3,180,000 heat units in its fibers. They bred it for 10 years with a claim to the highest burning power, which no one has yet been able to surpass.



Pepper Y Ahahah, just kidding, pepper X.

The second hottest is “Dragon's Breath”. Not the real thing, but a variety of pepper containing 2.48 million heat units. It was created not at all for the cultivation of a branch of hell on earth, but for beauty. However, in 2017, the variety was nominated for “Plant of the Year” and broke the then-hotness record.



Apparently, the dragon is very small, since it has such breathing. But what is the effect...

The next step was occupied by pepper spray and a certain “Carolina Reaper”, with 2.3 million units of pungency.



The Carolina Reaper winces at its sharpness

It turns out that even the most sophisticated gourmets can truly enjoy pepper spray? Not really, the cans often contain pure chemicals, but pepper, being a plant, contains other elements. But those who have been burned by the Indian Naga chili (Naga Jolokia) with 1.3 million heat units will definitely not want to deal with either the cylinder or the Reaper.



But what will happen at the other end of the long list of burning hells? It’s not difficult to guess that bell peppers have no heat at all. A little higher, 100-500, has pimento, a little similar in appearance to tomatoes with for some reason the end of a bell pepper attached. Tabasco sauce (classic) climbed a little higher, by 8-10 thousand units of spiciness.



The heat is not felt up to 500, so is it worth counting? The popular jalapeno pepper has 5-8 thousand heat units. And it can already make a not-so-sophisticated gourmet glow.

In general, pungency now does not stand out as the main taste, which is strange, but true. Apparently, those who compiled this list did not try the delicious “Scorpion Trinidad” to appreciate all 2 million units of heat and treat themselves to an unforgettable trip to the toilet.



Scorpio Trinidad and his scorpion babies.