HOT CHILIES
Tasteless, colourless, odourless and painful, pure capsaicin is a curious substance.
It does no lasting damage, but the body's natural response to even a modest dose is self defence, sweat pours, the pulse quickens, the tongue flinches, tears may roll. But then something else kicks in, pain relief. The blood stream floods with endorphins, the closest thing to morphine the body produces. The result is a high. And the more capsaicin you ingest, the bigger and better it gets.
Which is why the diet of the rich world is heating up. Hot chilies, once the preserve of aficionados with exotic tastes for cuisine from places such as India , Thailand or Mexico , are now a staple ingredient in everything from ready made meals to cocktails.
One reason, is that globalization has raised the rich worlds tolerance to capsaicin. What may seem unbearably hot to those reared on the bland diets of Europe or the Anglosphere half a century ago is just a pleasantly spicy dish to their children and grandchildren, whose student years were spent scoffing cheap curries or nacho chips with salsa. Recipes in the past used to call for a cautious pinch of cayenne pepper. For today's guzzlers, even standard strength Tabasco sauce, the worlds best selling chili based condiment, may be too mild. The Louisiana based firm now produces an extra hot version, based on habanero peppers, the fieriest of the commonly consumed chilies.
For the real heat seekers, even that is too tame. Britain 's biggest supermarket chain recently added a new pepper to it's shelves, the Dorset Naga. Inhaling it's vapour makes your nose tingle. Touching it is painful. Cooks are advised to wear gloves. By the standard of other chilies it is astronomically hot. On the commonly used Scoville scale [based on dilution in sugar syrup to the point that the capsaicin becomes no longer noticeable to the taster] it rates 1.6m units. This is close to the 2m units score of pepper spray used in riot control. The hottest habanero chilies score a wimpy 577,000.
For connoisseurs though, the macho fuss about ever hotter chilies is distasteful, even vulgar. It's like rating wines by their alcohol content only. Connoisseurs normally prefer the more complex Mexican matrix, which categorises chilies both by heat and weather they are fresh, dried, pickled or smoked. Any of these can produce big changes in flavour.
From this point of view, the most interesting trend is not in ever higher doses of capsaicin for the maniac market, but in the presence of chili in a range of foodstuffs that previous generations would have regarded as preposterous candidates for hotting up. Chili flavoured chocolate, for example, has gone from being a novelty item to a popular mainstream product. Hot apple chili jelly is now a condiment for meat and olive oil is being infused with chili.
The reason may be that capsaicin excites the trigeminal nerve, increasing the body's receptiveness to the flavour of other foods. Great news for both the gourmets and the poor, whose bland diet needs spicing up. Even a small quantity of capsaicin increases the perceived intensity of the other flavours in a dish.
Humans are the only mammals to eat chilies. Other species apparently reckon that nasty tastes are a powerful evolutionary signal that something may be poisonous. That offers a clue to the way in which humans came to develop a chili habit. In the same way as young people may come to like alcohol, tobacco and coffee, all of which initially taste nasty, but deliver a pleasurable chemical kick, chili eating starts off as a social habit, bolstered by a benign masochism. The adrenalin kick plus the natural opiates form an unbeatable combination for thrill seekers. Just don't fondle your partner.
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