Mondo Knows Facts
The Scoville scale ranks chillies by capsaicin
It began as a tasting test and is now measured by chemical assay
Wilbur Scoville devised the scale in 1912 by diluting chilli extract in sugar water until tasters could no longer detect heat. Modern labs measure capsaicin and dihydrocapsaicin directly and convert the result into Scoville heat units. A sweet pepper sits near zero and the hottest cultivars exceed a million units.
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Tags: chilli, capsaicin, measurement
The Scoville scale ranks chillies by capsaicin: the short answers
- Where does this come from, and can I check it?
- It began as a tasting test and is now measured by chemical assay. The figure is taken from Encyclopaedia Britannica, which is linked in full on this page. Every fact on Mondo Knows names its source rather than repeating an unsourced claim.
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