Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - All About Peppers

Starting point is 00:00:00 For thousands of years, humans in the Americas have cultivated an extremely hot plant. When it was transferred to the old world, it transformed cuisines, inspired scientific measurements, and made some meals much, much, much, much hotter. Its story stretches from the ancient Americas to kitchens on almost every continent today. Learn more about the surprisingly hot history of peppers on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. This episode is brought to you by Accenture. When your advertising operations fall out of sync, everything else follows. Spotify and Accenture are working together to reinvent the rhythm of ad sales,

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Starting point is 00:01:25 Plus, ample ground clearance and symmetrical all-wheel drive make the 2026 Trail Seeker the most capable EV Subaru has ever built. Test drive it at your local Subaru dealer or visit Subaru.ca. Before we get too far into peppers, we have to clarify exactly what we're talking about, because the word pepper applies to several different types of plants. The word pepper originally applied to spices such as black pepper or long pepper. Likewise, Sichuan peppers from China are another wholly unrelated plant that carries the same name. All of these plants are not related to the subject of this episode. The topic of this episode will be capsicum peppers, or members of the genus Capsicum.

Starting point is 00:02:17 And what all these plants mostly have in common is the production of a chemical known as Capsaeusin. True Capsicum peppers are members of the Nightshade family, Solanise, making them relatives of tomatoes, potatoes, eggplants, tobacco, and petunias. Botanically, the fruit of a pepper plant is actually a berry, although nobody would ever really call it as such. The genus capsicum is entirely native to the Americas, with its natural range extending from Mexico through Central America and the Caribbean into much of tropical South America. When Europeans first arrived, the only real thing they had to compare these hot, spicy

Starting point is 00:02:59 plants to was black pepper, so they dubbed them peppers, and the name stuck. The American origins of pepper plants are surprising to many people, given how important they have become in cuisines across India, Africa, Thailand, and parts of China. Yet all of these places adopted peppers only after they were brought back across the Atlantic and spread through trade routes in the Indian Ocean. Another important distinction to make note of is that between chilies and peppers. Pepper is the broader classification that applies to all. all capsicum plants. The term chili usually refers to the category of hot pepper plants that produce capsaicin. Non-chilly peppers are usually referred to as bell peppers. Bell peppers have essentially

Starting point is 00:03:50 no capsicin. They carry a genetic mutation that prevents them from producing any meaningful amount of it. And interestingly, bell peppers aren't really a fundamentally different type of plant. They're essentially non-spicy chili peppers that have been selectively bred for large sweet fruits. Green, yellow, orange, and red bell peppers are usually just different varieties or stages of ripeness, with red peppers generally being sweeter because they've been allowed to mature longer. Interestingly, breeders have done the same thing with normally hot pepper types. New Mexico State University has, for example, developed habanero-type peppers that retain the characteristic habanero aroma while producing little or no heat. Wild capsicum plants probably

Starting point is 00:04:40 originated in tropical South America and then diversified through Central and South America over millions of years. Humans encountered these plants thousands of years ago and independently domesticated several different species in different parts of the Americas. The most important domesticated species today is probably Capsicum annual. Despite the name annuum, meaning annual, the plant can actually live for several years in tropical climates. Genetic, archaeological, linguistic, and ecological evidence indicates that its principal domestication took place in Mexico, probably somewhere in the central eastern or northeastern part of the country. Humans had been using wild peppers long before the fully domesticated varieties appeared. Domestication gradually transformed small wild

Starting point is 00:05:27 fruits into the extraordinary range of forms that we see today, from tiny chill tepins to enormous bell peppers. However, there was no single pepper domestication event. At least five species of capsicum were independently domesticated in the Americas. That distinction is important because what we call different kinds of peppers today can mean two very different things. A jalapeno pepper and a bell pepper are just different varieties of the exact same capsicum annuum species, while habanero peppers belong to a completely different capsicum chinesi species. Capsicum chenese includes many of the world's hottest peppers, which I'll be getting to in a bit. But the scientific name is misleading.

Starting point is 00:06:16 Chinase means Chinese, but the species did not originate in China. The name resulted from an 18th century taxonomic mistake when European botanists encountered peppers that had already spread throughout Asia and assumed that they just originated there. Perhaps the most striking thing about the history of peppers is how rapidly they conquered the world. Before the year 1500, no one in Europe, Africa, or Asia had ever encountered a capsicum pepper. Spanish, and especially Portuguese trading networks, carried capsicum seeds across the Atlantic and Indian oceans during the 16th century. Peppers had several advantages as a global crop. They grew easily in tropical and subtropical climates, produced large quantities of fruit,

Starting point is 00:07:06 could be grown locally rather than imported from Asia, such as with black pepper, and they dried extremely well. Within remarkably little time, peppers had reached Africa, India, Southeast Asia, China, Korea, and Japan. India adopted chili peppers particularly enthusiastically. Prior to their arrival, Indians already had several ways of producing pungency in their dishes, including black pepper, long pepper, ginger, and mustard. Capsicum peppers provided an inexpensive, easily cultivated source of intense heat. They eventually became so important to Indian cuisine that it's difficult to even imagine many regional Indian dishes without them,

Starting point is 00:07:46 despite their historically, relatively recent arrival. Although Europeans introduced peppers to the old world, hot peppers never really caught on in European cuisine in the same way it did in Asia and Africa. One question that many people have asked is why hot spicy cuisines are more prominent in warm latitudes. There is a real connection between hot climates and the use of strongly spiced foods, but there probably isn't a single explanation. The strongest hypothesis concerns food preservation and microbes. Before refrigeration, food spoiled much more rapidly in warm climates because bacteria and fungi reproduce faster at higher temperatures. Many traditional spices contain compounds that inhibit microorganisms. Researchers Paul Sherman and Jennifer Billing compared traditional recipes from

Starting point is 00:08:38 dozens of countries and found that cuisines from hotter climates tended to use more spices, particularly spices with strong antimicrobial properties. They argued that the use of spices may have provided an advantage by reducing food-borne illnesses. Chili peppers fit perfectly into this pattern. Capsaicin has antimicrobial properties, although chili is only one of many antimicrobial ingredients. Garlic, onion, oregano, cloves, and other spices can also inhibit various microorganisms.

Starting point is 00:09:11 Traditional cuisines often combine many of these ingredients. The correlation between temperature and spice was particularly noticeable in meat dishes, which would have prevented a serious spoilage problem in tropical climates before refrigeration. And there's also the fact that chili peppers just grow better in tropical climates. Chili peppers are hot, but that isn't binary. Some are hotter than others, and some are really, really hotter than others. The sense of taste isn't something that is easily quantifiable.

Starting point is 00:09:46 We can quantify light and sound, but taste doesn't really hot. really lend itself to numbers. In 1912, a pharmacist by the name of Wilbur Schovel attempted to solve this problem, at least for measuring heat in food. He developed the Scoville organolectic test. Organolectic is just a fancy word that refers to the qualities of a food substance that stimulate sense organs. A measured pepper extract was repeatedly diluted, traditionally with a sweetened solution and presented to human testers. dilution continued until tasters could no longer detect the burning sensation. The amount of dilution necessary became the pepper's Scoville rating.

Starting point is 00:10:31 If an extract had to be diluted approximately 5,000-fold before its heat could no longer be detected, it would be assigned roughly 5,000 Scoville Heat Units, or S-HU. The system worked remarkably well for its time, but it had an obvious weakness. human beings were the measuring instruments. People have different sensitivities to capsaicin. Repeated tasting also causes sensory fatigue. Someone who just tasted an extremely hot sample may judge the next one differently

Starting point is 00:11:04 from someone starting fresh. Modern laboratories usually do not assemble panels of people and make them repeatedly drink pepper extract. Instead, pepper heat is generally measured chemically using high-performance liquid chromatography or HPLC. A pepper sample is dried and ground, its caps aesinoids are extracted,

Starting point is 00:11:25 and the chromatography equipment separates and measures the different heat-producing molecules. The resulting concentration can then be mathematically converted into the familiar Scoville Heat Unit Scale. A commonly used rough conversion is that one part per million of capsacea-sinoids corresponds to approximately 16 SHU on a dry weight basis. Over time, as with all cultivated plants that humans use, peppers have been bred for certain properties, particularly Capsaicin.

Starting point is 00:11:58 The range of heat levels in these peppers can vary greatly. At the bottom of the scale are bell peppers, which typically have an S.HU value of zero. Mild Anaheim and New Mexico peppers may range from roughly 500 to several thousand SHU. Halapinos typically range from 2,500 to 8,000 SHU. Seranos are usually somewhere around 10,000 to 25,000 SHU. Cyan peppers commonly reach approximately 30 to 50,000 SHU. And many Thai chilies and bird's eye peppers occupy the roughly 50,000 to 100,000 SHU range. Habaneros and Scotch bonnets commonly reach roughly 100,000 to 350,000 SHU,

Starting point is 00:12:45 although hotter versions can exceed those considerably. Several decades ago, a quest began to find and create hotter and hotter peppers. There is a niche market for hot sauces featuring many ultra-hot peppers as some people want hotter and hotter experiences. In 2007, the Guinness World Records listed Ghost Peppers as the world's hottest pepper. It has an S-HU between $855,000 and $1,040,000. The ghost pepper is native to northern India and is believed to have been a natural hybrid. However, since then, a series of record-breaking peppers has been the result of intentional selective breeding. In 2011, three different peppers set records for being the hottest.

Starting point is 00:13:33 In February, the Infinity Chili set a record at 1,067,286 SHU, and a few days later, the Naga Viper was recorded at 1,3386.5.2.5.2.5.2.5.2.2 2000 SHU. And in June, the Butch tea strain of the Trinidad Scorpion pepper came in at 1.4 million SHU. In 2013, the title was taken by Ed Curie of South Carolina, who developed a new pepper called the Carolina Reaper. The Carolina Reaper was originally measured at approximately 1,569,000 SHU, but has later been updated to 1.64 million SHU. The current record holder, as of the time of this recording, is another pepper developed by Ed Curie, known as Pepper X. In 2023, it had a measured value of 2.6 million SHU.

Starting point is 00:14:29 The increase in pepper hotness over the 16-year period from 2007 to 2023 was astonishing. In 2007, the record was a bit over 1 million SHU, and by 2023, it was nearly 2.7 million SHU. indicating that selective breeding increased the recognized record by roughly a 169%. And the trend isn't over. Ed Curry has announced that he has created a pepper even hotter than pepper racks. In a 2025 interview, he said the new variety was essentially ready, but that he wanted extensive testing and was expected to wait a few years before releasing it. How hot could a pepper theoretically get?

Starting point is 00:15:11 Pure Capsaeocin corresponds to roughly, 16 million SHU. A pepper will probably never achieve that, but there's still a lot of room for still hotter peppers than the current record. Whatever Ed Curry's new pepper is might break the 3 million SHU barrier. The global market for capsicum peppers is enormous, although estimates vary depending on whether the calculation only includes fresh peppers or also dried chilies, powder, sauces, extract, and processed food.

Starting point is 00:15:44 For the broadest definition of the Capsicum market, one 2026 industry estimate values it at roughly $77 billion worldwide, up from $73 billion in 2025. It projects the market could exceed $120 billion by 2034. The Asia-Pacific region accounts for more than half of global revenue, reflecting both the enormous production and consumption in countries such as China and India. Peppers are not a staple food like wheat, potatoes, or rice, but they have had a profound impact. Even though they were native to the Americas, they have come to define entire cuisines across multiple regions of the world. The executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel. The associate producers are Austin Otkin and Cameron Kiefer. My big thanks go to everyone who supports the show over on Patreon.

Starting point is 00:16:41 your support helps make this podcast possible. And I also want to remind everyone about the community groups on Facebook and Discord. That's where everything happens that's outside the podcast. And links to those are available in the show notes. As always, if you leave a review on any major podcast app or in the above community groups, you two can have it read in the show.

Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - All About Peppers

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