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The Scoville scale is a measurement of pungency (spiciness or "heat") of chili peppers and other substances, recorded in Scoville heat units (SHU). It is based on the concentration of capsaicinoids , among which capsaicin is the predominant component.
Wilbur Lincoln Scoville (January 22, 1865 – March 10, 1942) was an American pharmacist best known for his creation of the "Scoville Organoleptic Test", now standardized as the Scoville scale. He devised the test and scale in 1912 while working at the Parke-Davis pharmaceutical company to measure pungency , "spiciness" or "capsaicin ...
Like capsaicin it is an irritant. Homocapsaicin accounts for about 1% of the total capsaicinoids mixture [2] and has about half the pungency of capsaicin. Pure homocapsaicin is a lipophilic colorless odorless crystalline to waxy compound. On the Scoville scale it has 8,600,000 SHU (Scoville heat units). [1]
Capsaicin is a potent defense mechanism for chilies, but it does come at a cost. Varying levels of capsaicin in chilies currently appear to be caused by an evolutionary split between surviving in dry environments, and having defense mechanisms against fungal growth, insects, and granivorous mammals. [90]
A display of hot peppers and the Scoville scale at a supermarket in Houston, Texas. Pungency (/ ˈ p ʌ n dʒ ən s i / ⓘ) refers to the taste of food commonly referred to as spiciness, hotness or heat, [1] [2] [3] found in foods such as chili peppers. Highly pungent tastes may be experienced as unpleasant.
Lead study author Dr. Ernest Di Maio and his colleagues cooked 160 eggs, testing the different egg-boiling techniques and observing the changes in heat throughout each of the eggs.
In 2000, India's Defence Research Laboratory (DRL) reported a Scoville rating for the ghost pepper of 855,000 SHUs, [18] and in 2004 a rating of 1,041,427 SHUs was made using HPLC analysis. [19] For comparison, Tabasco red pepper sauce rates at 2,500–5,000, and pure capsaicin (the chemical responsible for the pungency of pepper plants) rates ...
The Food Protection Committee started in 1961 to provide objective quality standards for food-grade chemicals. Parts of the first edition were published in loose-leaf form between 1963 and 1966. The scope of the first edition is limited to substances amenable to chemical characterization or biological standardization which are added directly to ...