What's up with Da'Bomb?
Start Date
August 2025
End Date
August 2025
Location
ALT 307
Abstract
Capsaicin is the chemical compound found in chili peppers that gives them their pungent flavor and has anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties. Hot Ones is a talk show streamed on YouTube where celebrities are interviewed while eating increasingly spicy hot wings. Curiously, most celebrities find the 8th hot sauce the most hot. It seems that the Scoville ratings are not consistent with the perceived heat of the different sauces. Therefore, we wanted to determine how to measure capsaicin concentration in hot sauces and investigate various methods by which capsaicin can be extracted from the sauces. A common method for quantifying capsaicin uses high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). We started this project using known concentrations of capsaicin to determine the limit of detection (LOD) and limit of quantification (LOQ) of capsaicin using our instrumentation. We evaluated two methods for extracting capsaicin from hot sauces. One involved pre-drying the sauces in an oven, while the other used a direct ethanol extraction from the hot sauce. We found a linear response of detection between about 60 ppm and 1000 ppm of capsaicin. The lowest concentration detected was 10 ppm. When we dried the sauces prior to extraction, no visible peaks were observed. The direct extraction of the hot sauce seems to work better but we are still optimizing this procedure. In the future, results from these experiments could yield efficient methods of extracting and quantifying capsaicin from hot sauce.
What's up with Da'Bomb?
ALT 307
Capsaicin is the chemical compound found in chili peppers that gives them their pungent flavor and has anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties. Hot Ones is a talk show streamed on YouTube where celebrities are interviewed while eating increasingly spicy hot wings. Curiously, most celebrities find the 8th hot sauce the most hot. It seems that the Scoville ratings are not consistent with the perceived heat of the different sauces. Therefore, we wanted to determine how to measure capsaicin concentration in hot sauces and investigate various methods by which capsaicin can be extracted from the sauces. A common method for quantifying capsaicin uses high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). We started this project using known concentrations of capsaicin to determine the limit of detection (LOD) and limit of quantification (LOQ) of capsaicin using our instrumentation. We evaluated two methods for extracting capsaicin from hot sauces. One involved pre-drying the sauces in an oven, while the other used a direct ethanol extraction from the hot sauce. We found a linear response of detection between about 60 ppm and 1000 ppm of capsaicin. The lowest concentration detected was 10 ppm. When we dried the sauces prior to extraction, no visible peaks were observed. The direct extraction of the hot sauce seems to work better but we are still optimizing this procedure. In the future, results from these experiments could yield efficient methods of extracting and quantifying capsaicin from hot sauce.
