The Scoville Scale is a way of describing, in numerical units, how hot a given chile pepper is and how to compare its heat to other chile peppers.
For example, habanero peppers, which are really hot, measure between 100,000 and 350,000 Scovile units, while jalapeño peppers, which are sort of medium-hot, register 2,500 to 8,000 Scovile units. So the Scoville scale gives us a quantifiable way of saying that habanero peppers are around 40 times hotter than jalapeños.
What's interesting is that the Scoville Scale was originally devised using human tasters who would report how hot a certain chile pepper was, and it was necessarily pretty subjective. Today, hot peppers are categorized scientifically by measuring how the levels of a chemical called capsaicin they contain, and then translating the results back into the original Scovile units. Here's more about The Scoville Scale.
And here's more info about different kinds of chile peppers: Join Me on Facebook | Follow Me on Twitter
For example, habanero peppers, which are really hot, measure between 100,000 and 350,000 Scovile units, while jalapeño peppers, which are sort of medium-hot, register 2,500 to 8,000 Scovile units. So the Scoville scale gives us a quantifiable way of saying that habanero peppers are around 40 times hotter than jalapeños.
What's interesting is that the Scoville Scale was originally devised using human tasters who would report how hot a certain chile pepper was, and it was necessarily pretty subjective. Today, hot peppers are categorized scientifically by measuring how the levels of a chemical called capsaicin they contain, and then translating the results back into the original Scovile units. Here's more about The Scoville Scale.
And here's more info about different kinds of chile peppers: Join Me on Facebook | Follow Me on Twitter
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