Scoville

The pungency of a foodstuff, i.e. the spiciness of the taste, is measured in “Scoville”. This unit of measurement provides information on how hot a foodstuff is and determines the capsaicin content of the product. Capsaicin belongs to the chemical group of alkaloids (organic nitrogen-containing chemical compounds) and is obtained from the solanum Capsicum (paprika variety). It is one of the hottest substances on earth. The higher the capsaicin content, the hotter the pepper! The Scoville measuring method is abbreviated to SHU (Scoville Heat Units) and denotes the detectable spiciness by calculating the pure capsaicin content in the respective product. Until the year 2000, the maximum value was defined as 16,000,000 Scoville. For example, the simple garden pepper has a Scoville degree of 0 without any detectable spiciness. Nowadays, the Scoville scale ranges from 0 to 25,000,000 – the spiciness level of pure capsaicin.