Re: [CH]V6 #347 Hotness
Cameron Begg (begg.4@osu.edu)
Wed, 09 Jun 1999 08:20:54 -0500
Hi C-H's,
Daniel Isaza wrote:
>Yesterday I got a catalog from "The Redwood City Seed Company" and I don't
>agree with the hotness scale on it.
Explain it and tell us what you don't like.
>"Habanero, Orange * (C. chinense) Habanero has a respectable hotness, but
>when compared to the bird peppers or most Capsicum frutescens, its now know
>as "the wimpy one!"...
>What do you think, I thought that the C. chinense were among the hottnest
>peppers in the world.
I would not argue with the statement that "C. chinense were among the hottnest
peppers in the world." but what is actually THE hottest has used up a lot
of bandwidth on this list and for no good reason IMO.
There is no established method for determining the "hotness" of a pepper
pod. There are rough guides like the Scoville scale and there are
scientific methods like gas liquid chromatography (GLC), but no
reproducible methods for determining what we humans call "hotness".
FWIW, I can generally eat a whole fresh habanero pepper without much
trouble. (Bear in mind though that even different fruits from the same
plant can vary widely in "hotness".) I used to grow tepins, which are C.
frutescens, but I would not put a whole one of those in my mouth even
though they are maybe only one hundredth of the weight of a habanero. The
C. pubescens I am currently growing can also be very "hot" but I would be
hard pressed to decide whether they are more or less hot than a habanero
because the effect is quite different.
People on this list have told me that this is because of the different
ratios of capsaicins that a particular type of plant produces. These
capsaicins evidently cause us to have different perceptions of "hotness"
depending on these ratios, and of course other tastes and chemicals in the
pod can have more and complex effects.
My advice? Who cares - if you like it, eat it. Life is to enjoy to the full.
[The "I can eat anything hotter than you" types are usually inexperienced
newcomers to this list.]
---
Regards, Cameron.