Last time I was at a firehouse subs, I noticed they had a spicy sauce rack with everything labeled from 1 to 10 in spiciness. They only had ones going up to 8 at the time, so I tried adding a little bit of the 8 to my sandwich. Sriracha was like a 5 iirc.
I think it was a linear scale though because I didn’t really notice anything from the little bit I put on my sandwich. Put more on the other half and even then, it didn’t leave much heat.
Yet if I eat a slice of fresh cayenne when cooking, it will burn intensely for a good 5 minutes and I know that it’s only around the middle of the spice scale, which is logarithmic.
I wish humans didn’t have the ego issue that results in “some products are labeled very spicy when they aren’t so that fragile egos can act like they can handle more spice than they really can”. I’m kinda tired of needing to calibrate every single spicy thing trying to find some good heat without worrying about whether the extreme spice warning is accurate or just playing into that ego thing. I want enjoyable heat, not burn your face off.
Though I suppose part of it might be because I don’t think a single person can accurately measure the amount of heat in a variety of sauces from mild to very hot. Your own tolerance plays an important role and everything less spicy than your ideal will seem barely spicy at all and everything more will seem very spicy.
Last time I was at a firehouse subs, I noticed they had a spicy sauce rack with everything labeled from 1 to 10 in spiciness. They only had ones going up to 8 at the time, so I tried adding a little bit of the 8 to my sandwich. Sriracha was like a 5 iirc.
I think it was a linear scale though because I didn’t really notice anything from the little bit I put on my sandwich. Put more on the other half and even then, it didn’t leave much heat.
Yet if I eat a slice of fresh cayenne when cooking, it will burn intensely for a good 5 minutes and I know that it’s only around the middle of the spice scale, which is logarithmic.
I wish humans didn’t have the ego issue that results in “some products are labeled very spicy when they aren’t so that fragile egos can act like they can handle more spice than they really can”. I’m kinda tired of needing to calibrate every single spicy thing trying to find some good heat without worrying about whether the extreme spice warning is accurate or just playing into that ego thing. I want enjoyable heat, not burn your face off.
Though I suppose part of it might be because I don’t think a single person can accurately measure the amount of heat in a variety of sauces from mild to very hot. Your own tolerance plays an important role and everything less spicy than your ideal will seem barely spicy at all and everything more will seem very spicy.