Guess what? There is actually a defined scale with which chemists can measure the pungency of onions and garlic! It is called the Pyruvate Scale. Although there is no scale to measure the pungency of pure Gingerol, if you were able to measure it on the Scoville Scale, it would have a rough rating of 60,000 Scoville Heat Units. The last one, Gingerol, is the main factor in ginger’s strong bite and smell. Ginger gets most of its taste and spiciness from oils that contain the chemicals Zingerone, Shogaol, and Gingerol. Ginger, or gingeroot, has a very distinctive sweet and pungent flavor and aroma. But there currently is no specific scale to measure the amount of Piperine in any foods. ![]() Just imagine jalapeno flakes of roughly the same size and mass, and you can get a good picture of what black pepper can add in terms of spiciness (although the flavor of each one is vastly different!). ![]() That means that those flakes of black pepper can be around 5,000 to 10,000 SHU, which is around or slightly “hotter” than an average jalapeno. The amount of Piperine varies from 1 to 2% in long pepper, and 5 to 10% in commercial white and black peppers. In fact, pure Piperine, if you were able to “rate” it on the Scoville Scale, would clock in somewhere around 100,000 Scoville Heat Units (compared to 16,000,000 SHU for pure capsaicin). Piperine’s burn can closely resemble that of capsaicin, but tends to be milder by comparison. Peppercorns contain none of the capsaicin found in chiles and instead possess a chemical called Piperine. Black pepper comes from the piper nigrum species, and the spice we call know and love is produced from the dried and ground peppercorns from that plant. Chiles can be fruit pods of hundreds of cultivars and varieties from five domesticated plant species, which are capsicum annuum, capsicum baccatum, capsicum chinense, capsicum frutescens, and capsicum pubescens, and contain everything from sweet bell peppers and jalapenos to cayennes and bhut jolokias. This confusion started around the time of Christopher Columbus, when he came across chiles in the New World and erroneously brought them back to Europe calling them “peppers” (the misnomer stuck, so many of us call them “chile peppers”).Ĭhile peppers and peppercorns are completely different things. ![]() One of the world’s most popular seasonings, black pepper, is often mistaken as either being chile peppers or closely related to them. What you’re tasting is probably higher amounts of mustard seed with that Allyl Isothiocyanate, and it probably has no horseradish in there! Black Pepper If you’ve never had extremely spicy mustard containing lots of pungent heat, and you go to first try some, you might mistake that spiciness for the presence of horseradish. If you’ve ever eaten strong horseradish, you’re quite familiar with its bluster, smell, and bite.Ī side note: plain, yellow “ballpark” mustard that many Americans have grown accustomed to consuming on things like hot dogs and hamburgers contains scant amounts of little Allyl Isothiocyanate and instead gets a lot of its flavor from ingredients such as vinegar, sugar, and turmeric. Allyl Isothiocyanate lacks a lot of the pure “burning” or “fire” sensation of capsaicin and instead is more of an aromatic (meaning it triggers the nostrils more) and more of an irritant. This chemical has a type of “spiciness” that foodies know is quite a bit different than the piquancy of capsaicin-filled chile peppers. ![]() These three plants all produce an oil called Allyl Isothiocyanate (AITC). Most every fiery foods fan knows that it is the chemical called Capsaicin that gives chile peppers a “hot” or “spicy” sensation and that the amount of Capsaicin present in chile pods (and other things like hot sauce) is measured on the Scoville Scale.Ī question I sometimes get asked is, “Scott, is there a way to measure the amount of “heat” or pungency in other “spicy” items like black pepper, ginger, horseradish, garlic, wasabi, mustard, garlic, cinnamon, and onions? Let’s look at these items one by one.
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