This talk will cover the botanical and chemical histories of chilies and capsaicin touching on my experience growing a few varieties of “peppers” and making hot sauce. On the botanical side, I will describe the fruit, explaining where and why capsaicin and capsaicinoids are found.  I will discuss the origin of chilies, how they have been dispersed globally, and why they are called peppers. On the chemical side, I will explicate the molecule and means of its extraction as well as safety concerns when dealing with pure capsaicin. I will discuss the work of scientists and pseudoscientists who have worked with chilies and capsaicin: P.A. Bucholtz, who discovered the means of extracting the pungent principle of peppers in 1816, L.T. Thresh who described the principal chemical component, crystallized it and named it capsaicin in 1846, S. Kosuge and Y. Inagaki, who identified related compounds, capsaicinoids, in 1964, and  Wilbur Scoville, whose eminently unscientific means of measuring potency of chilies—the Scoville unit/scale of 1912—is widely used, making him more famous than the scientists. I will wrap up by discussing new breeds of chilies, the range of heat, and the culinary importance of hot peppers, with some regional (New Orleans) flavor.<br/>

Why we do this to ourselves? The chemical/botanical history of chili peppers

255th National Meeting (2018)

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