Habanero vs Ghost Pepper

Same species, and the Habanero is the yardstick the Ghost Pepper was measured against. Both are Capsicum chinense. The Habanero is the pepper of the Yucatán Peninsula, protected since June 2010 by a Mexican denominación de origen covering Yucatán, Campeche and Quintana Roo. The Ghost Pepper, Bhut Jolokia, is a landrace from Assam in northeastern India, where chile arrived with Portuguese traders in the 1500s and local farmers spent the following centuries selecting for heat.

When Bosland and Baral at New Mexico State set out in 2005 to test whether the Bhut Jolokia was really hotter than the reigning Guinness record holder, they planted three things side by side at Las Cruces: the Bhut Jolokia, the Red Savina Habanero that held the record at 577,000 SHU, and a standard orange Habanero as the control. The HPLC results were 1,001,304 SHU for the Bhut Jolokia, 357,729 for the orange Habanero, and 248,556 for the Red Savina. The record holder came in below the ordinary Habanero. Environment moves these numbers a great deal, and the paper says so, but the ranking did not move. Guinness took the Bhut Jolokia as the world's hottest in 2007.

The same paper explains why the Ghost Pepper is not just a hotter Habanero. Its DNA carried markers specific to Capsicum frutescens alongside the chinense ones, and Bosland and Baral called it a putative naturally occurring interspecific hybrid. The Habanero is straightforward chinense. In the 2012 follow-up trial the orange Habanero grouped with the Trinidad superhots at a similarity of 0.89 while the Bhut Jolokia sat apart. Genetically the Habanero is closer to a Trinidad Scorpion than the Ghost Pepper is.

The Habanero is a kitchen pepper. It is floral and apricot-like, and Yucatecan cooks blend it fresh into salsas in amounts a person can taste. The Ghost Pepper is a seasoning pepper of another order, dried and ground, arriving late and building. A Habanero sauce is hot. A Ghost Pepper sauce is a dare. The flavor of the Habanero survives at doses people actually eat, and that is why it stayed on the table after the record left.

Sources

• WIPO Lex: Declaratoria General de Proteccion de la Denominacion de Origen "Chile Habanero de la Peninsula de Yucatan" (Mexico, 2010)
• Bosland and Baral 2007, HortScience 42(2): 'Bhut Jolokia', the World's Hottest Known Chile Pepper is a Putative Naturally Occurring Interspecific Hybrid (doi:10.21273/HORTSCI.42.2.222)
• Bosland, Coon and Reeves 2012, HortTechnology 22(4): 'Trinidad Moruga Scorpion' Pepper is the World's Hottest Measured Chile Pepper at More Than Two Million Scoville Heat Units (doi:10.21273/HORTTECH.22.4.534)