Why do chilies taste spicy?

 

 

Measure of the degree of spiciness - the Scoville Scale

 

It is possible to measure by quantitative means how much a pepper burns, that is, its degree of pungency or spicy. The degree of spiciness is measured using SHU units (Scoville Heat Units), which measure capsicaine content. Scoville's table classifies different peppers according to their heat.

 

 

 

Wilbur Scoville, an American pharmacist, created in 1912 a test

 

 

 

which measures the degree of burning of the peppers and chillies.

 

organoleptic - the Scoville scale -

 

Scoville mixed the pepper extracts in a solution of water with sugar and tasted the mixture, normally with a panel of 5 tasters, progressively increasing the dilution until the burning disappeared. The degree of dilution classified gave the pepper its spicy, and gave rise to the Scoville table, in which the degree of burning is classified in SHU (Scoville Heat Units)

 

- Jalapeño pepper extract has to be diluted 8000 times in the solution with water to stop the burning sensation: A drop of pepper extract with the highest burning world record, Carolina Reper, needs a dilution greater than two millions.

 

A pepper or a “spicy” meal is considered if its SHU rating is greater than 500 - 1000 SHU.

 

- The pepper spray used by the American police has 5,300,000 SHU.

 

However, a weakness of the Scoville test was its imprecision, as it was linked to human subjectivity, especially due to the fact that the habit of consuming peppers alters personal tolerance to spicy: a peppers can be considered very strong by a person unaccustomed to consuming peppers and may seem mild to someone, consume a lot of peppers, especially if they have been doing it since childhood.

 

This inaccuracy is further reinforced by the fact that the strength of peppers of the same variety can vary widely depending on edaphic and climatic conditions.

 

Thus, more scientific methods are currently being used, namely High Pressure Liquid Chromatography, which provides the capsicain content in a much more precise way.