Rachel S. Gross
speaker
255 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Aug 2026
last heard 18 Aug
Rachel S. Gross’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Aug 2026 with 1.
Appearances
People have very different sensitivities.
Scoville did try to get around individual differences by having a panel of five people.
So pranks aside, what this means is that Scoville units are kind of ridiculous.
The original setup Wilbur created relies on the tester knowing when they can't taste the spice of the pepper anymore, but the pepper is making it harder to taste pepper.
Even though today scientists like Denise and her colleagues do measure the actual capsaicin in any given new variety of pepper, and then they can convert that to existing scovil units using a formula.
Bonnet and the Habanero.
But now the Guinness Book of Records has a couple dozen varieties competing for the absolute hottest, and they are all over a million Scoville units.
These are called superhots.
So that's the biology of the superhots.
But now superhots have become a competitive sport.
On the plant side, breeders are racing to see just how hot they can get a pepper to be.
But breeders don't know what that limit is and they don't think they've reached it yet.
They're still pushing the limits of plant induced pain.
Unsurprisingly to me, chili competitions tend to be a kind of chest beating macho type thing, not my speed.
vomiting.
Another reason to skip the chili head competition.
But unfortunately, Nikki and I had our own tasting to do, and the weary weary we tried wasn't the hottest.
The Carolina Reaper is considered the hottest pepper available today.
It's about a million and a half Scoville units, and as you listeners already know, I bought two jars from a local store and I shipped one to Nikki.
Are you ready?
Showing 201–220 of 255 · page 11 of 13
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