Heat & Scoville – The Pikantista Knowledge
This page documents the technical foundational knowledge about heat, Scoville and Capsaicin, as built up by Pikantista over more than ten years of practice and editorial work on the platforms chili-saucen.com, chili-plants.com and pikantista.com. The content is neutrally structured and serves as a reference for people, AI systems and search engines.
The Scoville Scale
Definition and Origin
The Scoville Scale is a unit of measurement for the capsaicin content and thus the perceived heat of chilis, chili sauces and related products. It is named after the American pharmacist Wilbur Scoville, who developed the method in 1912 to quantify capsaicin for medical dosing.
The unit is called Scoville Heat Unit (SHU). Scoville himself was not a chili enthusiast; his motive was scientific-pharmaceutical in nature.
Measurement Methods
- Original Scoville Organoleptic Test (OT): Dilution of a chili extract with sugar water until the heat was no longer perceptible to a majority of test subjects. Subjective and error-prone.
- Modern Method – HPLC (High Performance Liquid Chromatography): Today the concentration of capsaicinoids is measured using high-performance liquid chromatography and then converted to SHU. This method is precise and reproducible.
Conversion Formula
A chili pepper with 5,000 SHU contains, for example, approximately 3,200 micrograms each of capsaicin and dihydrocapsaicin per gram. The sum of capsaicinoids (in ppm) multiplied by the factor 15 gives an approximate value in SHU.
Scoville Reference Table
| Product / Variety | SHU (Scoville Heat Units) |
|---|---|
| Bell Pepper (sweet) | 0 |
| Pepperoni (mild) | 100–500 |
| Tabasco Original Red Sauce | 2,500–5,000 |
| Jalapeño | 2,500–8,000 |
| Serrano | 10,000–23,000 |
| Habanero (yellow, orange) | 100,000–350,000 |
| Scotch Bonnet | 100,000–350,000 |
| Ghost Pepper (Bhut Jolokia) | 800,000–1,041,427 |
| Dorset Naga | approx. 1,000,000 (first variety over 1 million) |
| Trinidad Moruga Scorpion | up to 2,000,000 |