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 Bring on the Fire: Spicy Inroads into the USA
By Mark P. Stevens
During the past 25 years there has been an unprecedented change in American eating habits. Improved transportation systems have allowed for the marketing of a much more diverse selection of foods than at any other time in history. One specific change in national tastes is the sweeping tide of hot and spicy food that is moving inland from the coasts and north from the southern Border States. Fiery cuisine is taking on a life of it's own, with specialty stores and restaurants devoted to the burn. There is even an Internet mailing list of chileheads with close to a thousand subscribers worldwide who use it to discuss every aspect of this spicy food subculture, centered on the hot chile pepper they adoringly refer to as "El Grande!"
Interest in hot & spicy cuisine is due in part to the availability of them resulting from a world wide distribution system, as well as the incorporation of large numbers of immigrants from tropical climates, where a love of spicy foods seems to have always been a culinary tradition. Large communities of people migrating from the Caribbean, Central America and tropical areas of the Pacific Rim such as India, Thailand and Malaysia have contributed to the popularity of their fiery foods.
The chile pepper itself is a New World vegetable. Like corn, tomatoes and potatoes, they were unknown outside the Americas prior to Columbus' discovery of the new world. Since the early voyages to the Americas started as a means of locating a western route for the spice trade, it is felt that this is why chiles were mistakenly named for the pungent fruit of the tropical vine that produces black pepper. Can you imagine Malaysian, Thai or Chinese cuisine prior to the introduction of chiles around 1500 AD?
Many varieties of hot peppers, also known as members of the capsicum species, are not hot, or pungent. Most bell peppers grown in the US have little or no pungency. These varieties are used fresh, or often used to color other foods. The wilder varieties, on the other hand, range from mildly to extremely pungent. This is entirely due to the substance capsaicin, or, actually, a group of similar substances called capsaicinoids. These chemicals are found mostly in the ribs of the peppers, and especially the placenta, which are the light colored membranes that attach the seeds to the inside of the pepper pod. Pure capsaicin is a whitish powder, soluble in alcohol but insoluble in cold water, which is why drinking water to help alleviate the burning won't work. Drinking whole milk or other dairy products will help alleviate the burn, as will bread or other starchy fare. Several people on the ChileHeads mailing list swear by bananas as the ultimate rescue!
Chiles are used in a wide variety of ways. They can be chopped and used raw in salsas and salads, or used along with citrus juices to marinade seafood in a dish called ceviche. They can also be cooked into a large number of Southwestern, Asian and Indonesian dishes. Chiles are also often dried and/or smoked. A smoked Jalapeno is called a Chipotle, and adds a pungent smokey heat to many soups and stews.
The capsaicinoids are unique compared to other "spicy" substances such as mustard oil (zingerone and allyl isothiocyanate), black pepper (piperine) and ginger (gingerol) in that capsaicin causes a long-lasting selective desensitization to the irritant pain by repeated doses of a low concentration or a single high concentration dose. This effect has been taken to its logical conclusion in that many pain killing salves and creams now use capsaicin as their active ingredient. This also manifests in 'chileheads' as an increasing ability to eat hotter chile peppers and foods. Another effect of capsaicin is that although it fools the nervous system into believing that it is being burned, that no actual physical damage occurs. As a result the brain releases endorphins, the body's natural painkiller, resulting in a slight euphoria experienced by the chile-chomper!
Back in the early 1900s, a chemist named Wilbur Scoville, developed a method to measure the heat level of chile peppers. it's called the Scoville Organoleptic Test, and is a dilution-taste procedure. In the original test, Scoville blended pure ground chiles with a sugar-water solution and a panel of testers then sipped the concoctions, in increasingly diluted concentrations, until they reached the point at which the liquid no longer burned the mouth. A number was then assigned to each chile based on how much it needed to be diluted before you could taste no heat. The Scoville heat scale is measured in multiples of 100 units, with the lowly bell pepper rated zero, to the scorching, fruity tasting habanero pepper which rates at 300,000 Scoville units. One variety of habanero, the Red Savina, has been tested at over 500,000 units, and has been listed by the Guinness Book of World Records as the worlds hottest chile! These days the Scoville method of tasting diluted chiles has been replaced by High-Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC). This has allowed a more precise measurement of the actual amount of capsaicinoids in a sample of chiles. The resulting measurement is usually related back to the Scoville scale for comparison.
• 0-100 Scoville Units - most Bell/Sweet pepper varieties.
• 500-1000 Scoville Units - New Mexican peppers.
• 1,000-1,500 Scoville Units - Espanola peppers.
• 1,000-2,000 Scoville Units - Ancho & Pasilla peppers.
• 1,000-2,500 Scoville Units - Cascabel & Cherry peppers.
• 2,500-5,000 Scoville Units - Jalapeno & Mirasol peppers.
• 5,000-15,000 Scoville Units - Serrano peppers.
• 15,000-30,000 Scoville Units - de Arbol peppers.
• 30,000-50,000 Scoville Units - Cayenne & Tabasco peppers.
• 50,000-100,000 Scoville Units - Chiltepin peppers
• 100,000-350,000 Scoville Units - Scotch Bonnet & Thai peppers.
• 200,000 to 300,000 Scoville Units - Habanero peppers.
• Around 16,000,000 Scoville Units is Pure Capsaicin.
One of the first commercial condiments to be used to add a little fire to ones life was Tabasco cayenne pepper sauce. Originated in southern Louisiana just after the civil war, it was used on raw oysters, scrambled eggs and gumbo. Until the early 90s this and a few other cayenne type sauces were the only game in town. The hot sauce industry is now approaching $200 million a year in business. Now there are over 1000 different varieties of hotsauce sold, some milder than Tabasco, many scorchingly hotter! The Tabasco Company itself now markets several varieties of sauces, one flaming version made with habanero peppers, considered by many fiery foods enthusiasts to be the hottest chile on earth.
Another product that has made deep inroads into popular culinary circles in the US is salsa, which surpassed the previous favorite condiment, catsup, in the early 90s. Generally a tomato based product with chiles, onions and cilantro, there are hundreds of varieties offered with diverse ingredients such as mangos, papaya, Vidalia onions, jicama, corn, tomatillos and olives. Once reserved as a dip for tortilla chips, salsas are now served as an accompaniment to a variety of meats and fish
Chileheads don't merely like the bite of these pungent pods; they yearn for it. The chile pepper adds a certain sensory element to a dish, however elaborate or delicate it might be. The chilehead is addicted. They start collecting different concoctions including hot sauces, salsas, fresh or dried chiles and ground chile powders. In what some might consider obsessive, the pepper eater may begin to turn his or her nose up at foods that cannot be enhanced by the addition of some sort of spicy condiment. That a third of the world's population has become so enamored of a fruit that bites back with such a vengance is remarkable. They will seek out others of their faith and trade chiles, sauces and stories. When they have stopped sweating and fanning their mouths they will reach for another taste of El Grande...
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