The Scoville Scale
The Scoville scale (wiki) is a measurement of spiciness for any particular pepper, with measurements taken in Scoville Heat Units (SHU). The scale was invented by Wilbur Scoville in 1912.
Most brands of hot sauce do not include SHU levels on their product labels, but instead use the more generic terms "mild", "medium", "hot", or "very hot", etc. (This may be due to many varieties using different combinations of peppers in their recipes.) Some bottles use dots, flames, or other visual icons as indicators of heat levels, usually measuring 1-5 in level of hotness, with 5 being the very hottest.
Scoville units are derived by taste testing an initial capsaicin sample (1st unit) and then testing other, diluted samples after that. This process is repeated, with each tested sample being more and more diluted until such time as no heat is detected. The final number is the SHU for that pepper. Note that the taste testers aren't tasting every singe degree of dilution. (That would take years for the hottest peppers.) So a sample that's diluted two times and has lots of spice might then be followed by a sample diluted four or six times, skipping past several dilution levels, and so on.
Below are some sample peppers and their respective SHU ranges.
|
Scoville Heat Units |
Hot Peppers Examples |
|
1,500,000–3,000,000+ |
Pepper spray, Carolina Reaper, Dragon's Breath, Pepper X |
|
750,000–1,500,000 |
Ghost Pepper, Trinidad Moruga Scorpion, Naga Viper Pepper, Infinity Chili |
|
350,000–750,000 |
Red Habanero |
|
100,000–350,000 |
Habanero Chili, Peruvian White Habanero, Scotch Bonnet Pepper |
|
50,000–100,000 |
Byadgi Chili, Bird's Eye (Thai) Chili, Malagueta Pepper |
|
25,000–50,000 |
Cayenne Pepper, Guntur Chili |
|
10,000–25,000 |
Serrano Pepper, Aleppo Pepper |
|
2,500–10,000 |
Jalapeño Pepper, New Mexican Anaheim Pepper |
|
1,000–2,500 |
Anaheim Pepper, Poblano Pepper |
|
100–1,000 |
Banana Pepper, Cubanelle |
|
0–100 |
Bell Pepper, Banana Pepper, Pimento |
