Chillies (Scoville Units)

The Carolina Reaper is the world's hottest chilli, it was created in 2013 by the (appropriately named) Ed Currie and scores 2.2 million SHU (Scoville Heat Units). This means the pepper has to be diluted by 2.2 million equal parts of sugar and water before the heat is undetectable. That’s one litre of Reaper to an olympic sized swimming pool of sugar water! Previous record holders were the Trinidad Scorpion Moruga Blend , the Naga Viper and the Ghost Pepper. 

Scoville units were originally determined by a team of five expert tasters, however, because of cost and issues in human performance such as desensitisation, chillies are now assessed by high performance liquid chromatography. Chromatography assesses the level of capsaicins (the chemicals responsible for the heat in chillies - also used in pepper sprays) and the result is very similar to the Scoville Units. 

Wilbur Scoville (1865-1942) was a pharmacologist rather than a chef and devised his scale for a pharmaceutical company which produced a pain-killing cream called "Heet".

We stock various chilli sauces in store, made in different parts of London: Brixton, Haggerston and Hackney Wick. The En Root Chilli sauces from the photo are made in Brixton and available in store or direct from https://www.enrootldn.co.uk/.