Datil vs Habanero

The Datil belongs to one town. UF/IFAS says it has been grown around St. Augustine, Florida, since the 1700s, and commercial production today sits in St. Johns and Putnam counties. The local story credits Minorcan settlers, survivors of Andrew Turnbull's New Smyrna plantation who moved to St. Augustine after the governor voided their labor contracts. Anna Hamilton, writing in Southern Cultures in 2015, treats the tale of seeds sewn into clothing as folklore from early 1900s oral tradition, and she points to a 1937 St. Augustine Record item in which a local preserves maker, S. B. Valls, sent to Santiago, Cuba, for seed of the Spanish Datil pepper. The botany agrees with Cuba. The Datil is C. chinense, a species that arose in South America and reached Florida through the Caribbean, not the Mediterranean. The USDA genebank has held a Datil accession, PI 281435, since 1962.

The habanero belongs to a peninsula. Mexico's Diario Oficial published the protected appellation of origin Chile Habanero de la Peninsula de Yucatan on June 4, 2010, covering all of Campeche, Quintana Roo and Yucatan. The declaration describes a fruit 4.5 to 6.0 cm long and 2.5 to 3.0 cm wide with a wall 1.5 to 2.0 mm thick, no ring constriction at the calyx, and a mature color that varies while the aroma stays the same. Both peppers are lantern-shaped C. chinense with the floral, fruity perfume that species carries.

What separates them at the table is sugar. Datil fans describe a sweet, fruity tang riding the heat, and the town built a condiment culture on it: Minorcan clam chowder, pilau, and bottled sauces from the 1980s on, starting with Chris Way at Barnacle Bill's and the Dat'l Do-It brand that sold 7,000 gift baskets in two minutes on QVC in 1995. The habanero is more perfume than sugar, apricot and citrus that survive cooking, which is why it anchors mango and pineapple sauces and Yucatecan dishes. Swap one for the other in a sauce and it works. Expect more sweetness from the Datil and more aroma from the habanero. A yellow Datil next to a yellow habanero is easy to mix up, which is how they end up mislabeled in seed lists.