The Scoville Scale: How Hot is Hot?

The Scoville scale has been the standard measure of "heat" in chile peppers since it was invented by Wilbur Scoville in 1912.  Over the years the Scoville scale has become less of a mystery given the growing popularity of spicy food and the interest in the health benefits of chile peppers.  Given the nature of ChileBomb I felt that it was fitting for me to follow suit and include an explanation of the Scoville scale.  After all this very site is dedicated to the almighty capsicum.

How does the Scoville Scale work?

Before I show you some examples of how different peppers rate on the Scoville Scale, I'll briefly explain how it works.  When it comes to the heat level of spicy foods, everyone's perception differs so there needed to be a unit of measure that would give everyone a relative vantage point as to the heat of a particular chile pepper.  To do that Wilbur Scoville created a scale that is based on how many units of sugar water are needed to dilute a unit of pepper puree to the point that the heat is no longer noticeable.

This means that a jalapeno pepper with a Scoville rating of 3000 would have to be diluted with 3000 units of sugar water before it wasn't so punchy.  A typical habanero pepper has to be diluted with up to 350,000 units of sugar water before it's heat is imperceptible while on part pure capsaicin has to be diluted with 16 million parts of sugar water before your taste buds can't detect any traces of capsaicin.

The old method of determining the Scoville rating of a pepper required a panel of tasters.  It's weakness was obviously human perception.  Some people have a naturally higher tolerance for a peppers heat so it wasn't very consistent.

The more accurate modern method is called high performance liquid chromatography.  Explaining how it works is well beyond the scope of this article.  Let's just say that through chemistry and engineering we can yield measurements in American Spice Trade Association (ASTA) pugency units.  These measurements are about 15 times lower than an actual Scoville rating so they are multiplied by 15 to arrive at the rating with which chile-heads have become so familiar.

How Do Chile Peppers Stack Up on the Scoville Scale?

Search our recipes or hot sauces by type of pepper for something that has the right amount of heat for you.