22/01/2026
Today is January 22nd, Hot Sauce Day. I love spicy food, like my favorite Chicken Madras at Curry Corner, a place which we recommend very highly. Below there are few interesting facts about spicy food:
Interestingly, the spiciness of a dish isn't a matter of taste, but rather the degree to which our oral receptors are stimulated by the compound found in hot spices – capsaicin. The spicy taste causes a warming sensation, bringing tears to the eyes, and a burning sensation in the nose and mouth. To more easily control and measure the desired heat, the Scoville scale was created. According to this scale, sweet red bell peppers, which don't produce any sensation of heat at all, have a Scoville Hotness Unit (SHU) of 0. Jalapeño peppers, Hungarian paprika, and Tabasco peppers have a SHU of 2,500-8,000.
In excessive amounts, capsaicin is a deadly poison – it causes bruising, tremors, difficulty breathing, and convulsions. However, even the world's hottest sauces don't contain lethal levels of capsaicin, as these products typically fall into the lower reaches of the Scoville scale. Pure, isolated capsaicin has a pungency of up to 16,000,000 SHU.
