It doesn’t matter who you are, or what you’ve done, or think you can do. There’s a confrontation with destiny awaiting you. Somewhere, there is a chilli you cannot eat.
Daniel Pinkwater, A Hot Time in Nairobi

A wise man, that Pinkwater. I have a pretty high tolerance for chillies, or so I thought. When an Andhra friend invited a bunch of us for a ‘genuine’ Andhra meal, I was pretty smug. But what unfolded would have been hilarious had it not reduced us to tears.

The spread had us (myself included) mopping our brows, dabbing at streaming eyes, and gasping for water, for that abandoned drink, for anything to alleviate our agony. Our hostess, smirking, finally handed us bowls of soothing yoghurt—consuming dairy is the only thing that counters the heat.

So it’s no coincidence that many ‘hot’ cuisine use butter, cream and coconut. Mexican recipes, for instance, make liberal use of sour cream, cheese and guacamole.

Indian and Southeast Asian cuisine are among the spiciest in the world. Ironically, until the 15th century, when the Portuguese brought chillies to these parts, cooks relied on black pepper. Once the more complex-tasting chilli arrived, however, it was quickly adopted and incorporated into traditional recipes, so that one forgets it was a Western import.

So what makes chillies the little bombs that they are?
Chillies contain capsaicinoids, which bind to a receptor in the lining of the mouth. This is the same receptor that registers pain from heat, thus causing that familiar burning sensation. But practice makes perfect, so repeated exposure to capsaicinoids depletes these receptors’ ability to feel pain, enabling one to eat hotter chillies. Simply put, the more chillies you eat, the more chillies you can eat.

Little wonder then that a few days after that flaming Andhra meal was over, and thankfully digested, I was tucking into a spicy Thai meal. But it did make me want to know why we keep coming back for more.

This tendency to pack away mirchi after malt is not entirely an Indian one. In the UK, after many pints at the pub, lager louts gain in machismo by eating the hottest curry they can find.

In Singapore’s Newton Circus, the eponymous Chili Crab is washed down with bottles of the popular Tiger Beer. We do pretty well on the mirchi-meter ourselves. Rajasthani Lal Maas, which literally translates into ‘red meat’, is a fiery good example. Emo Dashi, the Bhutanese national dish, also found in the Northeast, is a wonderful combination of fiery hot chillies cooked with yak cheese. Any self-respecting Maharashtrian, like myself, has a bottle or two of thecha—a staple in most ghati homes—in their fridge. This pungent paste of red chillies, garlic, salt and oil is used to spice up curries.

But not all chillies are dynamite. The slimmer and darker the pepper, the hotter it’s likely to be. The thickish pale green variety is fairly mild, while the tiny, dark green Thai Dragon chillies can raise a mushroom cloud over one’s head. Hungarian Paprika, on the other hand, is so mild as to be almost sweet.

In 1912, Wilbur Scoville developed a scale to measure the heat level in chillies. While there are other methods, the Scoville Scale remains the most respected and widely used (the US has chilli-eating contests and even a Scovie Award).

So the higher the Scoville units in a chilli, the hotter it is. On a scale of one to 10, a bell pepper rates a zero. The Mexican troika of Poblano, Serrano and the famous jalapeño is in the upper sphere of the scale.

More recently, the indigenous Tezpur chilli was rated the world’s hottest. The little devil from the Northeast defeated reigning champion, the Mexican Red Savina Habanero, by over 30 per cent on the Scoville Scale. Heartburn or no, it’s good to know that the title finally comes to India.

In the 19th century, at the height of the British Empire, the chilli brought that touch of Eastern mystique to the otherwise bland Victorian table. English companies like Crosse & Blackwell, Lazenby’s and, closer to home, good old Bolst popularised curry powder and hot sauce.

Anglo-Indian staples like Fish Moulee and Madras Lamb Curry specifically ask for a liberal dose of Bolst’s Curry Powder, so my kitchen cupboard always has a tin of Bolst’s.

And purists might shudder, but the next time you cook a typical angrezi shepherd’s pie or casserole, generously shake in some red chilli flakes or toss in a couple of jalapeños. It’ll become a hot favourite—trust me.

• In Laura Esquivel’s Like Water For Chocolate, Tita’s passion for Pedro is sublimated by cooking. The evocative book about repressed passion has a memorable scene where Tita cooks up vats of Chipotle chillies at a wedding feast. Her cooking is so magical that the ardour she feels is experienced by the wedding diners
• In Joanne Harris’ Chocolat, a confection with chillies is created ‘‘to incite the passions’’
• Fresh green chillies are rich in vitamin C (about twice that of citrus fruits); red chillies are full of betacarotene; and dried chillies have vitamin A
• Chillies also have antibacterial qualities and contain bioflavinoids, the antioxidant commonly found in apple juice
• The heat in chillies causes the heart to beat faster, causing the body to sweat. Sweat glands are the body’s natural air-conditioner—little wonder people in the tropics are huge fans
• Eaten in moderation, chillies activate a sluggish digestion

• Tabasco Pepper Sauce was named after the Tabasco River in southern Mexico by creator Edmund McIlhenny because he liked the sound of the word.
• Tabasco Pepper Sauce is made from a variety of pepper called Capsicum frutescens, known for centuries in Latin America and first recorded in 1493 by Dr. Chauca, the physician on Columbus’s voyage.
• Capsicum peppers contain an alkaloid called capsaicin, a spicy compound found in no other plant.
• In 1912, pharmacologist Wilbur Scoville devised an organoleptic test to rate the hotness of peppers. The mildest bell peppers rate zero; habaneras peppers score 200,000 to 300,000 units. Tabasco Pepper Sauce scores between 9,000 to 12,000 units on the Scoville scale.
• Tabasco Pepper Sauce is still made much the way Edmund McIlhenny first developed the sauce. Ripe peppers are harvested, crushed, mixed with Avery Island salt, and aged in white oak barrels for up to three years. The peppers are then drained, blended with strong, all-natural vinegar, stirred for several weeks, strained, bottled, and shipped.
• Harvard University’s Hasty Pudding Club produced Burlesque Opera of Tabasco in 1893 with the approval of Edmund McIlhenny’s son, John Avery McIlhenny, who bought the rights to the production and had it staged in New York City.
• In 1898, Lord Horatio Herbert Kitchener’s troops brought Tabasco Pepper Sauce on their invasion of Khartoum in the Sudan.
• In the 1920s, Fernand Petiot, an American working at Harry’s Bar in Paris, created the Bloody Mary. Tabasco Pepper Sauce was added to the recipe in the 1930s at the King Cole Bar in New York’s St. Regis Hotel.
• In 1932, when the British government began an isolationist “Buy British” campaign, Parliament banned the purchase of Tabasco Pepper Sauce, popular in England since 1868 and available in the House of Commons dining rooms. The resulting protest from members of Parliament was dubbed “The Tabasco Tempest,” and inevitably Tabasco Pepper Sauce returned to parliamentary tables. To this day Queen Elizabeth uses Tabasco Pepper Sauce on her lobster cocktail.
• During the Vietnam war, the McIlhenny Company sent thousands of copies of the Charley Ration Cookbook, filled with recipes for spicing up C-rations with Tabasco Pepper Sauce, wrapped around two-ounce bottles of Tabasco Pepper Sauce in waterproof canisters.
• President George Bush is a Tabasco Pepper Sauce devotee, sprinkling the pepper sauce on tuna fish sandwiches, eggs, and fried pork rinds. After receiving the Republican nomination for President in 1988, Bush handed out personalized bottles of Tabasco Pepper Sauce as presents for members of his family who dined with him at Arnaud’s Restaurant in New Orleans. “I love hot sauce,” Bush told Time magazine in 1992, “I splash Tabasco all over.”
• During Operation Desert Storm, a miniature bottle of Tabasco Pepper Sauce was included in one out of every three ration kits sent to troops in the Gulf. The United States military now packs Tabasco Pepper Sauce in every ration kit.
• Over 100,000 people visit Avery Island each year to see Tabasco Pepper Sauce being made, visit the Tabasco Country Store, and descend into the island’s salt mines. Each visitor receives a miniature bottle of Tabasco Pepper Sauce and a handful of recipes.
• The McIlhenny Company sells more than 100 million bottles of Tabasco Pepper Sauce a year.
• Tabasco Pepper Sauce bottles are labeled in fifteen languages and shipped to more than a hundred countries.
• Americans use more Tabasco Pepper Sauce than any other nation, followed by the Japanese who sprinkle it on pizza and spaghetti.
• The McIlhenny Company produced all its peppers on Avery Island until the late 1960s. Now more than 90 percent of the pepper crop is grown and harvested under the company’s direct supervision in Honduras, Colombia, Venezuela, Dominican Republic, Costa Rica, and Ecuador.
• Food critic Craig Claiborne claims that “Tabasco sauce is as basic as mother’s milk.”