Americans love their hot sauce. Between 2000 and 2013, the U.S. hot sauce market has grown 150 percent. This growth comes in spite of the fact that the hot sauce industry does very little advertising. The fact that nearly all of this growth has happened organically is impressive. So what has fueled America’s love affair with the hot?
The Scoville Chart: What’s in a pepper?
When it comes to barbecue sauces or other pepper sauces, everybody wants to know, “How hot is it?” And besides that, who’s to say what’s “hot” and what’s “medium?” The Scoville chart, named for Wilbur L. Scoville who developed it, attempts to take some of the subjectivity out of the question.