Habanero vs Jalapeño

Different species, different home regions inside Mexico, and something like a fortyfold gap in heat. The Jalapeño is Capsicum annuum from Veracruz. The Habanero is Capsicum chinense from the Yucatán Peninsula. The species name is a 250-year-old mistake. As Paul Bosland at New Mexico State puts it, the French taxonomist who named C. chinense in 1776 got his seed from China, but the species, like every Capsicum, is a New World plant.

The Habanero is the peninsula's signature and the government has said so. Mexico published a denominación de origen for Chile Habanero de la Península de Yucatán in June 2010 covering Yucatán, Campeche and Quintana Roo. The Jalapeño has a different kind of endorsement. Texas made it the official state pepper in 1995. One is protected as a place's product. The other was adopted by a neighbor.

Published heat testing keeps them far apart. In a 2005 replicated trial at Las Cruces, Bosland and Baral measured a standard orange Habanero at 357,729 SHU by HPLC and called that normal for the cultivar at that site. Texas A&M's HPLC test of the hot Jalapeño cultivar 'Grande' came out at 19,980 SHU, and that is a hot Jalapeño. Texas A&M also bred the other way, releasing 'TAM Mild Jalapeño-1' in 1983 for processors who wanted less. Even the hottest Jalapeño on record sits well under a tenth of an ordinary Habanero.

Flavor is the reason cooks keep both. The Jalapeño is grassy and vegetal, thick-walled, and eaten green: raw in pico de gallo, pickled, stuffed, or smoked into chipotle. The Habanero is floral and fruity, thin-walled, and used more as a seasoning than a vegetable, a small amount blended into a salsa or a hot sauce. Substitution fails in both directions. A Jalapeño cannot take a sauce where a Habanero takes it, and a Habanero in a popper is a practical joke.

Sources

• Bosland 1996, Purdue NewCROP: Capsicums: Innovative Uses of an Ancient Crop
• WIPO Lex: Declaratoria General de Proteccion de la Denominacion de Origen "Chile Habanero de la Peninsula de Yucatan" (Mexico, 2010)
• Texas State Library and Archives Commission: Texas State Symbols
• 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)
• Crosby et al. 2010, HortScience 45(11): 'TAM Ben Villalon', a New, Multiple-virus Resistant, Mild, Green-chile Pepper (doi:10.21273/HORTSCI.45.11.1756)