Ghost Pepper vs Jalapeño

The Jalapeño is a Capsicum annuum from the country where that species was domesticated. Kraft and colleagues (PNAS, 2014) put the origin of domesticated C. annuum in central-east Mexico, from southern Puebla to southern Veracruz, and the INIFAP volume Cultivo del chile en México traces the name to Jalapa, Veracruz, where it was grown and shipped to the rest of the country. Texas adopted it as the state pepper in 1995. The Ghost Pepper is a Capsicum chinense landrace from Assam in northeastern India. Bosland and Baral (HortScience, 2007) received its seed at the Chile Pepper Institute in 2001, found the crinkled leaves and constricted calyx of C. chinense, and then found DNA markers specific to C. frutescens as well, which is why they describe it as a natural hybrid between two species.

The heat numbers are not on the same scale. In the 2007 replicated trial at Las Cruces the Ghost Pepper averaged 1,001,304 SHU, two outside laboratories returned 927,199 and 879,953, and India's Defence Research Laboratory had measured 855,000 in 2000. In the 2012 follow-up trial by Bosland, Coon and Reeves, the single weakest Ghost Pepper plant in the field made 279,315 SHU. That is 35 times the top of the WikiPepper Jalapeño range. The Jalapeño's own published extremes run the other way: Texas A&M's TAM Mild Jalapeño II measured 1,080 to 1,620 SHU against 19,980 for the hot standard 'Grande'. A jalapeño can vary twelvefold with breeding. A ghost pepper never comes near it.

They differ in how the heat behaves, not only how much. A Jalapeño bites immediately and fades within a minute or two. The Ghost Pepper tastes slightly sweet and smoky for several seconds, then the burn arrives and continues to build. Bosland's group also documented that environment moves heat a long way within a variety, with single plants running 78 percent above the field average, which is why two jalapeños from one plant can differ and why a ghost pepper from a cool season is still a ghost pepper.

Use follows from that. The Jalapeño is eaten green and raw, pickled en escabeche, stuffed, and ripened red and smoke-dried into chipotle, a name INIFAP traces to Nahuatl chilli and poctli, smoke. The Ghost Pepper in Assam goes into pork dishes and chutneys in small amounts. Elsewhere it is a hot sauce ingredient, a powder and a challenge. Nobody stuffs one.

Sources

• Bosland & Baral, 'Bhut Jolokia', the World's Hottest Known Chile Pepper is a Putative Naturally Occurring Interspecific Hybrid, HortScience 42(2):222-224, 2007
• Bosland, Coon & Reeves, 'Trinidad Moruga Scorpion' Pepper is the World's Hottest Measured Chile Pepper, HortTechnology 22(4):534-538, 2012
• Kraft et al., Multiple lines of evidence for the origin of domesticated chili pepper, Capsicum annuum, in Mexico, PNAS 111(17):6165, 2014
• Zegbe Domínguez et al., Cultivo del chile en México (INIFAP / Universidad Autónoma de Zacatecas, 2012)
• PLANTanswers (Texas A&M horticulture): TAM Mild Jalapeno II release notes