Scotch Bonnet vs Ghost Pepper

Both are Capsicum chinense landraces, and that is where the resemblance stops. Moses and Umaharan (2012) describe the species as Amazonian in origin and note that West Indian cultivars such as Scotch Bonnet sell at a premium in European and North American markets on pungency and flavor. The bonnet is named for its shape: Bartz and colleagues at the University of Delaware (Journal of Applied Horticulture, 2017) describe a short, squat, irregular fruit resembling a Tam o' Shanter. The Ghost Pepper is from Assam in northeastern India, where the Assamese word jolokia simply means the Capsicum pepper. Bosland and Baral (HortScience, 2007) received its seed at the Chile Pepper Institute in 2001, waited years for enough seed to run a trial, and found a C. chinense carrying DNA markers specific to C. frutescens, hence their term putative natural hybrid.

The heat testing is unusually good for both. In the 2007 Las Cruces trial the Ghost Pepper averaged 1,001,304 SHU by HPLC, and two commercial laboratories returned 927,199 and 879,953 on the same ground sample. India's Defence Research Laboratory had reported 855,000 in 2000. The WikiPepper range runs exactly between those measurements. The habanero control in that trial came in at 357,729, and the Red Savina then holding the Guinness record made 248,556, well under its listed 577,000. For the Scotch Bonnet, Bartz cites a 363,000 to 456,000 SHU rating from Bosland's 1996 work, which sits above the WikiPepper range and should be read as a figure for hot selections. The Ghost Pepper is roughly three times a hot bonnet and ten times an ordinary one.

One is a cooking pepper and the other is a spice. Bartz reports that in 2009 Jamaica consumed 98.3 percent of its Scotch Bonnet crop at home, 10,387 tonnes, and exported 179. It seasons jerk, pepper sauce and escovitch. The Ghost Pepper in its home region goes into pork dishes and chutneys and has been smeared on fences to deter elephants. Abroad it is a hot sauce ingredient, a powder and a dare.

In the mouth the difference is timing as much as size. The Scotch Bonnet gives its fruit up front, something between apple, tomato and stone fruit, with heat that follows quickly. The Ghost Pepper tastes faintly sweet and smoky for a few seconds and then the heat arrives late and keeps building. A Scotch Bonnet can stand in for a Habanero in most dishes. A Ghost Pepper cannot stand in for either without changing what the dish is.

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
• Bartz, Evans, Murphy & Pill, The effects of pruning and potassium fertilisation rate in the greenhouse production of Scotch bonnet pepper, Journal of Applied Horticulture 19(2):119-124, 2017
• Moses & Umaharan, Genetic Structure and Phylogenetic Relationships of Capsicum chinense, J. Amer. Soc. Hort. Sci. 137(4):250, 2012