The Scoville Scale is the official ranking system for spice. Spice is the thing you put on pizza. The thing that makes a boring dish interesting. The thing that tickles your tongue and fills your body with delight. This article will take a picante dive into the world of spice.

Spice is a peculiar food in our universe; spice is an anomaly of all plants; best of all, they taste tangy and pungent, and at first bite your mouth is reaching for more. To measure the amount of spice left within a certain pepper, humans invented the Scoville Scale.

Reach for the nearest jar of something spicy. Somewhere on the packaging, you may come across its spices listed as a Scoville Heat Unit (SHU). However, it’s more than just a system. It has history, a specific ranking formula and more.

THE SCOVILLE SCALE’S EVOLUTION

The origins of the Scoville Scale can be traced back to as early as 1912, when William Scoville (pharmacist from the US) started measuring the heat ratio of spice. Scoville didn’t just taste peppers and judge them based on personal opinion - he created a specific test for how each pepper is ranked, which he called the Scoville Organoleptic Test. Scoville brewed a mixture of a special alcohol and some oil from a pepper into some sugar water, and placed it onto the tongues of the taste-testers. He kept adding droplets of water until the testers informed him that the pepper didn’t taste spicy or hot any more.

Based on the number of times that he had to dilute the solution on the taste-testers’ tongues, a number rating was assigned. For instance, the jalapeño was given the rating of 10,000 Scoville Heat Units, which means that the taste-tester’s solution had to be diluted with water 10,000 times until the jalapeño pepper tasted normal and not spicy.

However, this took a long time and wasn’t very precise - today, scientists have tweaked the method a bit to speed it up yet still produce accurate results. A technique used by scientists, known as the High-Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC) was used to see how spicy a pepper was based on a certain type of liquid (capsaicin, to be exact) within a pepper.

The HLPC formula can then be applied to a separate formula, which will convert the number to Scoville units. Even though the HPLC method is widely used, William Scoville’s scale is still used today.

DIFFERENT LEVELS OF THE SCOVILLE SCALE

Earlier, we mentioned that the jalapeño pepper was 10,000 SHUs. Whilst 10,000 may seem like a huge number, and thus the jalapeño is super far on the scale, that’s not really reality. In fact, it’s quite low on Scoville Scale - it’s on one of the super-low levels.

The Carolina Reaper is the hottest known pepper on Earth. At 1,641,000 SHUs, it will immediately give an overwhelmingly fiery taste, as you insistently try to spit it out. Your tongue could be scarred for life from this pepper - don’t try it at home. Even the people who love spice the most couldn’t handle this pepper!

Other Scoville-Measured Peppers Are Listed Below:

SOLVING PEPPER PROBLEMS

Sometimes, a pepper may occasionally slip into your mouth - maybe you wanted to try it, maybe you thought it was something else, or maybe you thought it was a pepper that wasn’t spicy. Even if you’re super careful, there’s a high chance you will encounter some fiery feelings within your mouth.

When this happens, it’s important to be prepared. Many think things like, I’ll have a glass of water ready. This is the absolute worst thing you can do - drinking water whilst eating something spicy actually makes it worse, spreading the spice around your mouth until finally draining it after minutes have passed. The best thing to do is have some milk on the side, a bowl of rice or some bread - carbohydrates are really helpful in those situations.

SHISITO PEPPER

There’s a lot of different peppers to write about, and many would’ve made an interesting read - but when we talked with some spice experts about what other sections to add, we discovered the Shisito Pepper.

The peppers have a sweet and citrusy flavor, but one in ten of those peppers is hot. Sprinkle a bit of lemon juice and sea salt over them after roasting, gobble them up, and just wait in anticipation to see who gets the hot one!

CHILLY CAPSULES

Peppers can also be life-changing medicines, as well as a flavorful dish addition.

With the very same spice expert, we had a very short conversation before I left - since the topic was so intriguing, I decided to interview our chilly expert one last time:

Interview with Brooklyn (an alias to keep our expert anonymous, at their request)

Q: What is a spice capsule, and what can it do?

A: A capsule is filled with good-quality chilly powder, and having a capsule every day can clear plaque from your arteries and improves blood circulation, thus preventing heart attacks and the need for stents and heart surgeries.

Q: Can you give an example of when this miraculous capsule was used?

A: I gave this capsule to the principal of a well-known school in Delhi, who was scheduled for heart surgery. After taking the capsules for just a week, he went to the heart surgeon, who was surprised to see that the plaque had cleared up from the arteries, and he no longer needed surgery.

Q: Finally, can you tell our readers about how other parts of the body could be helped with these capsules too?

A: Any pain or inflammation in the joints that is caused by poor blood circulation can definitely improve with this remedy.

Thanks for reading this article. Watch out for those deadly hot peppers!

Image Sources: PepperScale, PepperGeek, Delish, Masterclass & U.S Dairy

Research Sources: Masterclass, LoveMyChillies, PepperGeek, ChilliPepperMadness, U.S Dairy & Apple Podcasts