So where does such a little pepper get its big heat? The answer is capsaicin, a chemical in the pepper.
When you eat a pepper, capsaicin comes in contact with pain receptors in your mouth. These pain receptors sense heat. When capsaicin activates the receptors, they send a message to the brain telling it you have eaten something hot.
Your brain responds to the message by raising your heart rate, increasing perspiration, and releasing endorphins, which are special body chemicals that help relieve pain. The highest concentration of capsaicin is present in the white flesh on the inside of a pepper and the coating on the seeds.
Peppers come in all different sizes, shapes, colors, and spiciness levels. In 1912, a chemist named Wilbur Scoville developed a special scale to measure the spiciness of a pepper.
Scoville had trained tasters sample water containing chili pepper extracts, an experiment called the “Scoville Organoleptic Test.” By diluting the samples until the tasters could no longer detect any heat or spiciness, Scoville assigned each pepper a number rating called a “Scoville Heat Unit (SHU).”
A habanero pepper, for example, has an SHU rating of 200,000. This means the habanero sample had to be diluted 200,000 times before tasters could no longer detect heat.
The Scoville Scale is still in use today, and peppers range from 0 (bell peppers) to over a million (naja jokolia/ghost chili). Pure capsaicin measures 16 million SHUs!
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