Google Doodle honours man behind chilli pepper’s spicy heat scale

Each level gets progressively tougher, starting off with bell peppers that has 0 scoville heat units to the one that has over 2 million in Scoville heat units. The Scoville Organoleptic Test has been now standardized as the Scoville scale.

The mini game was created by Olivia Huynh in collaboration with artist Brian Kaas and engineers Corrie Scalisi, Tom Tabanao, Jordan Thompson, Kris Hom and Jk Kafalas.

People have known about the tongue-burning, tear-inducing qualities of peppers long before Columbus reached the Americas.

His name was Wilbur Scoville and he is being remembered with a Google Doodle on what would have been his 151st birthday. About a few years ago, the Bhut Jolokia from Assam in India was the first to pass the one million score on the Scoville scale.To celebrate Scoville’s birthday and honor his unique invention, Google has created an interactive doodle that shows him experimenting with different types of chillies while measuring their heat.

Once you click on the fiery play button, the game will help you learn heat properties of three kind of peppers- bell pepper, jalapeno pepper and cayenne pepper- in three levels.

“Spiciness is somewhat of a universal, comical experience, which I think opened the door for us to do something we usually might not be able to, like a fighting game”, says Huynh. His book, “The Art of Compounding”, contains one of the earliest mentions of milk as an antidote for pepper heat. You need to aim ice cream scoops at the peppers to neutralize them.

The Carolina Reaper (1.5m SHU) took the mantle two years later and, as new peppers are constantly being found and grown, the next champ could be just around the corner.