The Truth about Chillis

This South American fruit can get many of us hot under the collar. Why, then, do we love it so?

- Kalpish Ratna

THE NOBEL PRIZE in Medicine, in 2021, was awarded to David Julius of the University of California, San Francisco and Ardem Pata-poution of Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California, for their discovery of receptors for temperature and touch. These were based on a food so ubiquitous it is difficult to imagine Indian cuisine without it. And yet, it hasn't been with us very long. Like the tomato, the potato, the sapota and chocolate, it was a gift from the Aztecs cultures and other Native American annihilated by Europeans. As they rampaged round the globe, marauding European hordes distributed their plunder of horticultural skill among other cultures. After the Portuguese had massacred Goa (1510), they consoled us with chilli. From 1510 to 2021, chilli has had a brilliant global career, crowned by the Nobel Prize. It is a suitable moment to reconsider this burning fruit of genocide.

The Nobel was awarded for an investigation centred on chilli's principal ingredient, capsaicin, which stings the tongue with unbearable heat. Today, the heat of chilli is culinary machismo. Chilli fresh green, dried red, powdered, or ground down to its essence-spikes every dish like a snarl of barbed wire. Why does chilli, and specifically capsaicin, burn?

In 1997, Julius discovered a receptor for capsaicin. Soon, he found that this receptor could be activated by heat as well-so this was a receptor that transmitted the message 'burn' to the brain.