Whether you're a hardened chilli-head
or a newcomer to the world of chilli and pepper sauces, we aim to please.
Our selection of chilli sauce from around the world range from the mild
to the insanely wild. We carry a wide variety of tasty Caribbean sauces,
sauces with great names which make good gifts, to the food additives for
which you must sign a disclaimer. If there's something you are looking for
that we don't have, let us know, we'll try our best to get it. We accept Credit-Cards online and ship Chilli Sauce to
the World.
The Scoville
scale is a measure of the 'hotness' of a chilli pepper
or anything derived from chilli peppers, i.e. hot sauce.
The scale is actually a measure of the concentration of
the chemical compound capsaicin which is the active component
that produces the heat sensation for humans. The name
capsaicin comes from the scientific classification of
the pepper plant, a type of fruit, that belongs to the
genus Capsicum. Capsaicin (8-methyl N-vanillyl 6-nonenamide)
occurs naturally in chilli peppers together with a number
of very similar compounds referred to generically as capsaicinoids,
it is the precise ration of these capsaicinoids which
causes the differences in taste reaction to different
pepper species, for example the typical delayed reaction
to the habanero pepper (C. chinense) as compared
to other species.
The scale or test is named after Wilbur L. Scoville
(1865-1942), who developed the Scoville Organoleptic Test
in 1912 while working at the Parke Davis pharmaceutical
company. As originally devised, a solution of the pepper
extract is diluted in sugar water until the 'heat' is
no longer detectable to a panel of (usually five) tasters;
the degree of dilution gives its measure on the Scoville
scale. A sweet pepper, that contains no capsaicin at all,
has a Scoville rating of zero (no heat detectable even
undiluted); whereas the hottest chillies, such as habaneros
have a rating of 300,000 or more, indicating that their
extract has to be diluted 300,000-fold before the capsaicin
present is undetectable. The greatest weakness of the
Scoville Organoleptic Test is its imprecision, because
it relies on human subjectivity.
Nowadays, capsaicin concentrations are determined using
more scientific methods, typically High Pressure Liquid
Chromatography (HPLC). The direct measurement of capsaicin
gives much more accurate results than sensory methods.
The Scoville rating or 'hotness' of fresh chillies is
obviously dependent upon the variety of pepper but even
within one particular variety the hotness can vary greatly,
this is particularly so of the habaneros where a 10 fold
variation is not uncommon. Factors influencing the heat
of a fresh pepper include growing temperature, hours of
sunlight, moisture, soil chemistry, and the type and amount
of fertilizer used. The heat of dried peppers is equally
dependent upon all of these factors as it was growing
plus the conditions under which it was dried.
Until recently the Guinness
World Records had the world’s hottest chilli
pepper as the Red Savina Habanero. Generally these peppers
range from 350,000–570,000 Scoville Units as compared
with a score of 2,500–5,000 for the jalapeno pepper.
The record breaking pepper was produced by GNS Spices
Inc in 1994 in Walnut, US and measured at 577,000 Scoville
units. Recently however several super-hot peppers have
challenged for the record. Experts at the Defence Research
Laboratory in the army garrison town of Tezpur in the
North-Eastern state of Assam, claimed a locally grown
Naga Jolokia in testing was nearly 50 per cent more pungent
than the red savina habanero at a blistering 855,000 Scoville
units. However, this remained unsubstantiated. Seeds of
the same Naga-Bih Jolokia pepper (sometimes also called
the Bhut Jolokia) cultivated at New Mexico State University
have stood-up to testing and in Fenruary 2007 a specimen
registering a staggering 1,001,304 Scoville heat units
was officially acclaimed by the Guinness World Record
as the new worlds hottest pepper. Naga Jolokia is nearly
twice as hot as the previous holder, the Red Savina.
Check our hotness
scale to see how chilli peppers and sauces shape up
together.
As an aside, the Guinness World Records site is altogether
fascinating, it's all to easy to spend an hour exploring
extraordinary facts that you wouldn't even imagine people
would even report, e.g. Tallest
Celery Plant - Joan Priednieks of Weston Zoyland,
Somerset, UK, grew a celery plant that measured 2.74-m
(9-ft) tall in 1998. She bought the plant at a school
fete in 1997. Joan says the celery is too tough to eat...
