Have you ever wondered how spicy your peppers are? Or why do certain peppers taste practically sweet while others may set your taste buds on fire simply by nibbling on them?
The Scoville Scale, on the other hand, can help you in answering these questions.
To understand the Scoville Unit, Heat Units are used to measure the spiciness of peppers on the scale (SHU). A jalapeno pepper, for example, has a SHU range of 2,500 to 5000. But what do these figures imply, and how did they come to be? Look at the Scoville Scale’s fundamentals.
The Origins of the Scoville Unit
The Scoville scale was established by American pharmacist Wilbur Scoville in 1912. Scoville created the scale after using his Scoville Organoleptic Test to evaluate how hot pepper was.
Scoville conducted his experiment by mixing an alcohol-based extract of the capsaicin oil from a pepper into a sugar-water solution and applying it to taste testers’ tongues.
He gradually added more water to the mix until it no longer tasted hot, according to his taste testers.
Scoville then assigned a number rating to the pepper depending on how many times he had to dilute the solution to get the heat to go away.
For example, jalapeno peppers have a Scoville value of 10,000, implying that a jalapeno solution would need to be diluted 10,000 times before the heat was neutralized.
According to the Scoville Unit Scale (SHU), How Hot are Your Peppers?
The Scoville Heat Units of peppers from all over the world range from zero, as seen in sweet bell peppers with no capsaicin, to 800,000 to 1,001,300.
This is seen in Bhut Jolokia (Ghost Pepper), which is regarded as one of the hottest peppers in the world, according to the Scoville Scale.
To put this in context, a typical Jalapeno has a range of 2,500 to 8,000 units of heat. Standard pepper spray has a unit count of 2,000,000–5,300,000, while pure capsaicin has a unit count of 15-16,000,000.
With Scoville Heat Units ranging from 1.56 million to 2.2 million, the Carolina Reaper is now regarded as the world’s hottest pepper.
Your spicy sauce bottle, too, has a Scoville rating. Original Tabasco has a Scoville unit rating of 2,500 to 5,000.
Ranking of How Spicy Peppers Are
Bell Pepper (0 SHU)
The bell pepper, or sweet pepper, is found in cuisines all over the world and carries a recessive gene that blocks the synthesis of capsaicin entirely.
It is often stir-fried or added to curries, and it serves as the foundation of Cajun cookery as a member of the “Holy Trinity” of vegetables when combined with onion and celery.
Pimenta Biquinho (500 – 1,000 SHU)
This adorable Brazilian chili is brilliant red and pleasantly sweet, with only a hint of heat. Pickled, they’re typically seen with the olives in churrascaria salad bars across the country.
Poblano (1000 – 1500 SHU)
The Poblano Chili, named after its homeland of Pueblo, is the most common in Mexican cuisine. It is often roasted and sliced into rajas, which are later utilized as a filler with everything from tamales to enchiladas.
They can be left whole and stuffed to make chiles Rellenos, dried and processed into powders, or toasted and rehydrated to make sauces like the popular mole poblano.
Jalapeno (1,000 – 20,000 SHU)
The noble Jalapeno, Texas’ state pepper, is possibly the only chili to have traveled in space.
This medium-spicy pepper is often sliced fresh, pickled, or grilled (filled with cheese and wrapped in bacon, of course), and serves as the foundation of Tex-Mex cuisine.
They are known as chipotle peppers after being smoke-dried.
Bird’s Eye Chili (100,000 – 225,000 SHU)
This small powerhouse, sometimes known as Thai chili, is what heats Southeast Asia’s spiciest foods. It is commonly used in curries and sauces like sambal, as well as to season Vietnamese soups and stir-fries.
Datil (100,000-300,000 SHU)
While planted throughout the country, the datil is best famous for its roots in St. Augustine, where it was thought to have been imported to the United States in the late 18th century.
Mature peppers have a yellow-orange color and are often used in Minorca based dishes.
Scotch Bonnet (100,000 – 400,000 SHU)
This tropical species is primarily found in the Caribbean, where it complements jerk meals, giving them their trademark heat and sweetness.
It is often confused and swapped for its nearest relative, the Habanero. Known as aji Chombo in Central America, where it is used to spice ceviche.
Its name derives from its resemblance to the classic Tam O’shanter Cap.
The Trinidad Scorpion Butch T Pepper (800,000 – 1,463,700)
According to official tests, this pepper has 800,000 – 1,463,700 Scoville Heat
Units on the Scoville Scale, making it one of the hottest peppers on the planet.
In comparison, an average jalapeno pepper has between 2,500 and 8,000 Scoville Heat Units. This shows that the average Trinidad Scorpion Butch is approximately 226 times hotter than a jalapeno.
That is one spicy pepper! A Habanero Pepper can have up to 350,000 SHU. It is more closely related to peppers such as the Ghost Pepper (Bhut Jolokia) and the Trinidad Moruga Scorpion.
Ghost Pepper (1,000,000 SHU)
This cultivated cultivar, known as Bhut jolokia or red naga in its native India, held the world record for the hottest chili in the world until it was replaced by the Trinidad Moruga Scorpion in 2012 and other rivals since.
Since the ghost pepper stores its capsaicin in vesicles throughout the fruit rather than in the seeds and placenta like most chilis, it is impossible to avoid the intense heat it produces.
Far too hot for normal ingestion, it has been found in pastes and oils that no rational person would ever touch.
Komodo Dragon Pepper (1,400,000 – 2,200,000)
This is one of the hottest peppers in the world, with Scoville Heat Units ranging from 1,400,000 to 2,200,000.
When compared to a standard jalapeno pepper heat of roughly 5,000 SHU (the range is 2,500–8,000), the Komodo Dragon pepper is 175-880 times hotter.
Trinidad Moruga Scorpion Pepper (2,009,231 SHU)
The overall mean heat in the study was more than 1.2 million Scoville Heat Units, with the maximum measuring more than 2 million SHU on the Scoville Scale.
When compared to a regular Jalapeno Pepper, which has a Scoville Heat Unit count of around 5,000.
The Trinidad Moruga Scorpion pepper is one of the hottest peppers, which is more than 400 times hotter than the average pepper. That is quite hot!
The Moruga Chili Pepper, which belongs to the category of “super hots,” is used in a variety of hot sauce products.
Carolina Reaper (2,200,000 SHU)
Until very recently, the Carolina Reaper was the world’s hottest pepper. This ominous-looking pepper, developed by a horticulturist in Rock Hill, South Carolina, is a hybrid between the aforementioned ghost pepper and the red habanero.
Searching for this breed on YouTube can yield hours of schadenfreude, as many people have videotaped their attempts to swallow this small fireball, frequently with tragic results.
Dragon’s Breath (2,480,000 SHU)
In Wales, in the U.K. a new record-breaking chili was bred only this year.
The Dragon’s Breath chili, named after the legendary dragon that symbolizes its nation of Wales and made with a newly discovered plant food, is not only extremely spicy but also lethal.
Although no one has eaten this monster, it is believed that doing so would cause the diner to go into anaphylactic shock, perhaps shutting down normal body function.
What are Scoville Heat Units?
The number of times capsaicin must be diluted in sugar water is measured in Scoville heat units or SHU. The amount of capsaicin in pepper or even a spicy sauce is measured in Scoville Heat Units (SHU).
The hotter the pepper, the higher the Scoville rating. As a result, a low grade suggests that there is little or no heat.
How to Determine Scoville Heat Units?
People who are taste testers don’t know how hot the pepper is when they mix an alcohol extract of the capsaicin oil from dried peppers with water and sugar until they can’t taste the heat.
The Scoville Heat Unit is then given to the pepper based on how much water is needed to make the “burn” go away.
This means that to get the oil from a pepper that has 5,000 Scoville Heat Units, you’d have to dilute it with oil 5,000 times.
What is the Scoville Unit Scale’s Accuracy?
The human taste differs greatly from one person to the next, making the Scoville test somewhat subjective. Because the test is based on human perception, it is necessarily imperfect to some extent.
Scoville ratings for peppers vary depending on the growth conditions of the pepper, such as humidity and soil, as well as the pepper’s ripeness, seed lineage, and other factors.
Human taste testers are no longer needed because a process known as high-performance liquid chromatography can identify the exact dosage of capsaicin.
However, the Scoville Scale remains the official measurement, which is used by both amateurs and professionals.
Red-Hot Spicy Sauce
Other plants that produce spicy hot compounds are also measured using the Scoville test.
Plants like the resin spurge, a cactus-like plant endemic to Morocco, generate resiniferatoxin, a molecule that is 1,000 times hotter than pure capsaicin on the Scoville scale.
Final Thoughts to Understanding the Scoville Unit to Measure the Pepper’s Heat
We’ve heard stories of people buying ‘nice looking peppers’ then returning to breathe fire on the poor unsuspecting shop keeping because the peppers were too hot to eat.
Now you have no excuse if you read this article, you’ll know what’s what in the amazing world of peppers.
We are told that it’s healthy to have some manageable heat in your cuisine – so go for it and have fun!
Don’t worry if someone can eat hotter peppers than you can. It all about eating good and delicious food and enjoying it.
Edited By
Patricia Godwin
