Enlarge / There might quickly be a better strategy to inform how sizzling that chili pepper is. (credit score: Azman Mohamad / EyeEm by way of Getty Photos)

Capsaicin is the compound liable for figuring out simply how sizzling quite a lot of chili pepper will probably be; the upper the capsaicin ranges, the warmer the pepper. There are a number of strategies for quantifying simply how a lot capsaicin is current in a pepper—its “pungency”—however they’re both too time-consuming, too expensive, or require particular devices, making them lower than splendid for widespread use.

Now a group of scientists from Prince of Songkla College in Thailand has developed a easy, transportable sensor system that may connect with a smartphone to indicate how a lot capsaicin is contained in a given chili pepper pattern, in keeping with a brand new paper within the journal ACS Utilized Nano Supplies. Bonus: the system is whimsically formed identical to a red-hot chili pepper.

An American pharmacist named Wilbur Scoville invented his eponymous Scoville scale for assessing the relative hotness of chili peppers again in 1912. That testing course of includes dissolving a exact quantity of dried pepper in alcohol in order to extract the capsaicinoids. The capsaicinoids are then diluted in sugar water. A panel of 5 skilled tasters then tastes a number of samples with lowering concentrations of capsaicinoids till no less than three of them can not detect the warmth in a given pattern. The hotness of the pepper is then rated in keeping with its Scoville warmth items (SHU).