The Scoville Scale

The Scoville Scale provides us with a way to compare all our lovely peppers. From jalapeño to serrano and ghost to carolina reaper, the scoville scale takes them all and gives us a number (called Scoville Heat Units or SHU) by which we can compare how spicy these peppers are. The scale ranges from a few thousand to a few million and tells us about the concentration of capsaicinoids in each pepper. This scale was named after is founder, Wilbur Scoville, who is the brain behind the Scoville organoleptic test that dissolves dried pepper in alcohol and then dilutes it in sugar water to give us insight into the capsaicin in each pepper.