I mentioned it 2 posts ago.

Chilly pepper is the king of spices, powerful and feared, pleasure and pain of the taste buds. If this spice intrigues you, you want to use it more often, but you are afraid to exaggerate, well, you ended up in the right place. Today, we’ll have a good overview on how to pair chilly pepper and, most importantly, how to face its hot side.

Fiercely spicy

Capsaicin is the molecule responsible for the spiciness of chilly pepper.

Actually, other molecules, as gingerol and piperin, contributes to the spiciness, but capsaicin is the dominant one in chilly pepper (I let you imagine in which food is dominant gingerol :)).

There are hypothesis that capsaicin is produced by the pepper plant as a defensive mechanism against fungus and other pathogens. What is certain is that capsaicin is a stingy, irritating molecule. By binding the receptors of burning, capsaicin triggers the unpleasent (or delightful, for certain persons) stingy reaction that we all know. Capsaicin provokes a sort of temporary inflammation of the mucosa that intensifies the perception of certain feelings, as hot and cold.

The Scoville scale

Chilly peppers are not all alike. As such, they do not contain the same quantity of capsaicin. The concentration in the fruit depends on the variety and waves even in plants of the same type, with the area of plantation and the degree of maturation.

Scoville scale has been used for at least a century to determine the degree of spiciness of chilly peppers. The initial method, developed by the pharmacist Wilbur Scoville at the beginning the twentieth century, consisted in making a pool of people taste the alchoolic extracts of chilly peppers and the relative dilutions. The new analytic techniques allowed developing more accurate and faster methods. Scoville test is currently performed with high performance liquid chromatography, which allows quantification of capsaicin with efficiency and precision.

How to pair chilly pepper?

Pairing chilly pepper is not trivial. I confess: I have never liked very spicy dishes (even though the thing is relative, given that sensitivity to spiciness is, not only personal, but also an acquired thing…long story short, we can get used to spiciness…). I have always considered chilly pepper as a prevaricator of tastes, while I read that, in certain amount and paired with certain foods, can act as a flavour enhancer.

Paired with meat and tomato sauces, chilly pepper could create iconic dishes as the Calabrian ‘nduja, the Mexican mole poblano, the Indian murgh makhani (butter chicken) and so on..

At the beginning of 2000, the pairing chocolate-chilly pepper, well known by the Aztec, returned trendy. It might look audacious, but chilly pepper can really intensify cocoa’s flavours. Also, the vanilla aroma, present in a few types of chocolates, has a buffering effect against chilly pepper.

How to defeat the spiciness?

I guess everyone received tips on how to quench that burning feeling, provoked by chilly pepper. You might have heard to avoid drinking water, because it might enhance the burning feeling, while others argue that you should use honey. Let’s see what really works against chilly pepper and what is actually a myth:

• Capsaicin is a apolar molecule. This means that is not soluble in water, but rather in fats. Therefore, drinking water doesn’t alleviate the burning feeling. The best solution is eating foods containing fats as yogurt, milk, cheese, which bind the capsaicin and provide a quick relief.

• Cold food can help, as cold has an anesthetic action.

• Molecules as menthol and anethol have an antagonist action against capsaicin. Thus, a couple of mint leaves might turn useful.

• Avoid, on the other hand, carbonated drinks. The CO2 amplifies the burning feeling.

Next time that you dine in a Indian restaurant, you will know why their dishes are paired with kefir/lassi or other drinks made with fresh yogurt and mint ;)

If you are wondering what the photo means, I am going to reveal it next week :)

References

J. J. Tewksbury et al., "Evolutionary ecology of pungency in wild chilies", Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2008, 105, 11808–11811.

A. Othman et al. "Determination of Capsaicin and Dihydrocapsaicin in Capsicum Fruit Samples using High Performance Liquid Chromatography", Molecules, 2011, 16, 8919-8929.

F. Chartier, Taste buds and molecules: the art and science of food and wine, Ed. McClelland and Stewart, 2009.