The Scoville Unit Garden at the New Orleans Botanical Garden

Louisiana cooking is known for its extra kick of heat, either by the addition of cayenne pepper in gumbo or a nice coat of hot sauce on a shrimp poboy. Peppers range in the amount of spice based on the level of capsaicin produced, which is largely dependent on the cultivar and partially dependent on the environment in which the pepper is grown. We know how hot peppers are based on word of mouth, or by trial and error, but did you know there are actually units that can estimate the level of spice that an individual pepper may yield. A garden will be put in at the New Orleans Botanical Garden in City Park in the next couple weeks that will showcase a range of peppers spanning the entirety of the Scoville scale.

What is a Scoville unit?
In 1912, Wilber Scoville developed a unit of measurement that would semi-quantify the level of heat, or concentration of capsaicin in peppers. The Scoville unit is named after the American pharmicist, and is still used today as a general unit correlating to the spiciness of a pepper. The organoleptic test is the procedure utilized to obtain the Scoville unit of peppers. In Scoville's method, a measured amount of alcohol extract of the capsaicin oil of the dried pepper is produced, after which a solution of sugar and water is added incrementally until the "heat" is just barely detectable by a panel of (usually five) tasters; the degree of dilution gives its measure on the Scoville scale. Thus a sweet pepper or a bell pepper, containing no capsaicin at all, has a Scoville rating of zero, meaning no heat detectable (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scoville_scale).


What will peppers will be in the garden?
All American Selection Bell Peppers 'Cajun Bell' and 'Orange Blaze' will be displayed on the low end of the Scoville scale, while on  the pepper spray side of the scale (see figure) we have the last three years Guiness Book of World Records world's hottest peppers, being: Ghost, Scorpion and Carolina Reaper. The Scoville Units of the peppers range from 0-1,474,000.


For more information contact Andrew Loyd at aloyd@agcenter.lsu.edu