Question on chillies

[Peter Herman x5495]

In article <39co7s$2mu at mserv1.dl.ac.uk> Clemens Suter-Crazzolara <un691cs at genius.embnet.dkfz-heidelberg.de> writes:
>> : But what about units?  How about Sombreros?
>> 
>> I was watching one of these pseudo science programs and their is an actual
>> unit of "hottness" of chillies, but I've tried all day and I cant remember
>> what it is.
>> 
>> mike
>> 
>IMHO, probably one of the best answers to a bionet question yet.
>
>clemens
>

I think that the unit that you are looking for is the Scoville Unit
(sp?) which is used to measure hotness.  This is not as dumb as it
might sound at first blush.  There are lots of uses for chile (note
the proper :-) ie New Mexico spelling) which do NOT want it to be
hot.  Much of what we grow here in the chile capital of the world is
used in coloring of food poducts where hotness is not what you want.

rpeter at nmsu.edu
Peter Herman
Derpt of Biology
New Mexiico State Univ.