18 October: Chilli peppers

The French Revolutionary Calendar even dedicated a day to chilli peppers. That day was October 18th, so here are a few things you might not know about chilli peppers.

1. The chilli pepper is from the genus Capsicum, members of the nightshade family.
2. There are many different types – 140 different kinds grow in Mexico alone. This is because these plants are capable of mutating a lot. Not only that but the appearance and taste of the fruit can vary according to the conditions it is grown in.
3. That said, only five species are domesticated, and most kinds of pepper we eat are cultivars of one of these, Capsicum annuum. This includes both jalapeños and the much milder bell pepper.
4. It is commonly said that the hottest part of a pepper is the seeds. That's not strictly true. The hotness comes from the membrane which attaches the seeds to the fruit. The substance which makes peppers hot is called capsaicin, and the greatest concentration of it is found in these membranes.
5. While capsaicin tastes hot to mammals, birds don't taste it at all. Hence it is birds which spread the seeds in the wild.
6. Got an unexpected mouth full of hot pepper? Your instinct may be to down a glass of Water, but in fact your best bet to soothe your burning mouth is a glass of Milk. Casein, the main protein found in milk, neutralises capsaicin.
7. There is more Vitamin C in a chilli pepper than in an Orange.
8. There is a scale for measuring how hot a pepper is. It's called the Scoville scale, and hotness is expressed in Scoville Heat Units (SHU). It is named after a pharmacist called Wilbur Scoville, and here's how it works. You cannot measure the heat of a pepper with a machine – you need expert human tasters. The extracts of dried peppers are diluted with sugar water until the tasters can no longer detect its heat. The more sugar water required to achieve this, the higher the rating. Although scientists have found a way to cut out the human element by using chromatography, aficionados would say it isn't as accurate. A bell pepper, the mildest kind, will fall in the range of 1-100 SHU. At the opposite end of the scale are the Trinidad Moruga Scorpion at 1.2 million SHU – so powerful that the heat can be felt by harvesters through latex gloves. This however, is only the second hottest. Even hotter is the California Reaper, which can get as hot as 2.2 million SHU.
9. Why do these plants produce such hot fruit? Scientists think they've figured it out. The plants produce capsaicin as a defence mechanism against fungus and microbe infestation. The plants become vulnerable to such infections when insects feed on the fruit and bore tiny holes in it. Hence the really hot peppers come from areas where there are more insects.
10. In Japan, there is a type of pepper called shishito. Most of them are mild, like bell peppers, but about one in ten is hotter. Not California Reaper hot, but hot enough to make eating a batch of them interesting.

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