Scoville scale

"Scoville" redirects here. For the creator of the measurement, see Wilbur Scoville. For other uses, see Scoville (disambiguation).
Pepper stand at Central Market in Houston, Texas, showing its peppers ranked on the Scoville scale
The ghost pepper of Northeast India is considered to be a "very hot" pepper, at about 1 million SHU.[1]
The Naga Morich, with around 1 million SHU,[2] is primarily grown in India and Bangladesh.

The Scoville scale is a measurement of pungency (spiciness or "heat") of chili peppers and other substances, recorded in Scoville heat units (SHU). It is based on the concentration of capsaicinoids, among which capsaicin is the predominant component.[3]

The scale is named after its creator, American pharmacist Wilbur Scoville, whose 1912 method is known as the Scoville organoleptic test.[3][4] The Scoville organoleptic test is a subjective assessment derived from the capsaicinoid sensitivity by people experienced with eating hot chilis.[3]

An alternative method, high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), can be used to analytically quantify the capsaicinoid content as an indicator of pungency.[3][5][6]

  1. ^ Barry-Jester, Anna Maria (October 15, 2014). "Rating Chili Peppers On A Scale Of 1 To Oh Dear God I'm On Fire". FiveThirtyEight. Retrieved 2014-11-02.
  2. ^ "Some Like It Hot: Dorset's Ultra-Hot Chillies". Archived from the original on 19 November 2012. Retrieved 25 August 2010.
  3. ^ a b c d Twilight Greenaway (10 January 2013). "How Hot is That Pepper? How Scientists Measure Spiciness". Smithsonian.com, US Smithsonian Institution. Retrieved 17 December 2017.
  4. ^ Scoville, Wilbur (May 1912). "Note on Capsicums". Journal of the American Pharmaceutical Association. 1 (5): 453–454. doi:10.1002/jps.3080010520.
  5. ^ Cite error: The named reference collins was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  6. ^ Al Othman, Zeid Abdullah (2011). "Determination of Capsaicin and Dihydrocapsaicin in Capsicum Fruit Samples using High Performance Liquid Chromatography". Molecules. 16 (10): 8920. doi:10.3390/molecules16108919. PMC 6264681. PMID 22024959.