Chile pepper remnants found at a pre-agricultural site in Peru are evidence that the pepper was the first spice used anywhere on Earth (side note: though often categorized as a vegetable, chiles are really a fruit, as evidenced by their seeds). To put these questions about measurement in context, it’s helpful to know a little history.īorn somewhere in the Amazon, where the borders of Bolivia, Peru and Brazil meet, 1 peppers were one of the first cultivated plants in the Western Hemisphere. Why did the heat vary so much, and how could I be sure my future purchases packed the appropriate punch?īeyond that, what did it mean that the hottest pepper on earth had a Scoville rating of more than 2 million? How do you quantify the spiciness of a chili pepper? In New York, I’d purchased fresh grocery store jalapeños that turned out bland, spiceless chili, but found the same varietal in New Mexico set my mouth on fire.
I’d been victim to dud chiles in the past. I wondered, why were certain peppers spicier in some places than others?
In El Paso, a restaurateur told tales of crossing the border to Juarez just to get a burrito that packed some heat. A Mexican family in Kentucky complained they couldn’t make the food they had in Zacatecas. It was an odd complaint, given the headlines last year about world-record-setting peppers from South Carolina. As I traveled the country this summer in search of America’s Best Burrito, I heard time and time again that the chiles in the United States weren’t spicy enough.
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