What I Learned from Dr. Paul Bosland

In November 2023, I sent an email to Dr. Paul Bosland. SpiceQuest was still an idea I was trying to figure out, about eight months away from launch, and I had a lot of questions.

My brother, an ecologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, had read some of Dr. Bosland’s work and thought it might be useful to me. The more I read, the more obvious it became that this was the person I needed to talk to. He had spent decades studying chili peppers and co-founded the Chile Pepper Institute at New Mexico State University. So many of the things I was struggling to understand were things he had been researching for years.

So I took a shot and wrote him a cold email. To my surprise and delight, he responded within a few days.

From there, we spoke on the phone several times. He was generous with both his time and his knowledge, and when he didn’t have an answer, he pointed me in the right direction.

Across those conversations, he helped me work through testing problems, encouraged my ideas for international kits, and introduced me to research that still influences how we describe every pepper we put out.

He reminds me a lot of my father, who has Alzheimer’s now. My dad spent his career at the top of his field, and he loved sharing what he knew and helping other people. I recognize that same generosity in Dr. Bosland.

That means a lot to me.

One of the first things I needed help with was the Carolina Reaper. I was buying peppers from different growers and having them tested, and the results were driving me crazy. You read about Reapers reaching 1.5 million to over 2 million Scoville Heat Units. The ones I was testing were barely cracking a million.

I was developing a kit with a progression from one through ten, the idea behind our Pro Kit. I needed to understand what I was working with and give people a reasonably consistent experience.

When I told him what was happening, he laughed. I remember him saying those results were pretty much what he would expect.

He explained how much growing conditions affect a pepper’s heat. Genetics are part of it, but weather, growing conditions, and fruit maturity also influence capsaicinoid levels. A Carolina Reaper is a variety of pepper; its name doesn’t guarantee a particular test result.

That helped enormously. His guidance contributed to my decision to rely on HPLC lab testing, and it helped me understand why I couldn’t simply take a published Scoville rating and put it on my product.

I wrote more about those Reaper tests, including the lab results, in The Journey to Perfect Peppers: How SpiceQuest Selects, Tests, and Innovates.

But the work that really got me excited was his research on the different ways we experience heat.

Most of us have a pretty limited vocabulary for peppers. Mild. Hot. Really hot. Maybe a few other words when we’ve eaten something we regret.

Yet anyone who enjoys spicy food knows there are differences that those words don’t explain.

Some peppers burn the tip of your tongue almost immediately. Others take a while. You’re enjoying the flavor, thinking you’ve got this, and then the heat starts building in your throat. Some give you a sharp, prickly sensation. Others produce a broader, more even burn. And some stay with you long after you’ve finished eating.

Dr. Bosland and Dr. Ivette Guzmán studied those differences and developed a vocabulary for describing them. Their 2017 paper on the sensory properties of chili pepper heat identified five qualities:

• Development: How quickly you start feeling the heat.
• Duration: How long it lasts.
• Location: Where you feel it: in your lips, on your tongue, across your palate, or in your throat.
• Feeling: Whether it’s sharp and prickly or more spread out, which they describe as “flat.”
• Intensity: How strong the heat is.

This was incredibly useful to me. Here was a way to explain things I had experienced but hadn’t known how to describe.

And I want to give them credit: that work inspired the tasting notes we created for SpiceQuest, and it continues to influence the ones we produce today.

When I started using those descriptions at tastings, people really responded. I could ask someone to notice how quickly the heat developed or where they felt it, and suddenly we had a lot more to talk about. They would start comparing peppers and explaining why they preferred one over another.

People like learning this stuff. I’ve seen it over and over again.

Along with the heat, there’s the flavor and aroma of the pepper itself. Fruitiness, earthiness, floral notes, sweetness. There’s so much to discover once you start paying attention. Dr. Bosland often compared peppers to wine, and that made complete sense to me. We’re comfortable talking about differences between grape varieties and growing regions. Peppers deserve that same curiosity.

Our conversations about culture were just as helpful.

Early on, I told him I wanted to create kits featuring peppers from around the world. He was very encouraging, and he helped me think about how the peppers people grow up eating influence what they enjoy.

I’ve since seen this firsthand with customers from different countries. Someone might try one of my hotter peppers, then tell me about a pepper from home that they find much more satisfying, or even perceive as hotter, despite a lower Scoville rating.

The kind of heat matters. The flavor matters. So does the food you associate it with.

That stayed with me as I developed our Asian Kit, and subsequently our African Kit and the soon-to-be-released Mexican Kit. I wanted people to discover peppers in the context of the places they come from and the foods people make with them. His encouragement made me even more excited to keep exploring.

Then he told me about NuMex Trick-or-Treat.

He and his colleague Danise Coon developed this habanero variety to retain habanero flavor and aroma without the heat. It even looks like the orange habanero you’d expect to be hot. You can read their paper introducing the variety here.

At Cornell University, plant breeder Michael Mazourek developed Habanada with a similar goal: preserving the fruity, floral flavor of a habanero without the heat.

I thought that was fantastic. I meet plenty of people who are interested in peppers but don’t enjoy the burn. Being able to introduce them to habanero flavor without overwhelming them opens up all kinds of possibilities.

Dr. Bosland clearly enjoyed it too. While explaining the name and joking about how you could fool someone with two similar-looking peppers, he said, “You have to have some fun when you’re doing research too.”

That’s the man I’ve gotten to know through these conversations. He takes the science seriously, and he still has fun with it. He’ll explain a research finding, suggest someone you should contact, tell a story, and get excited about another pepper you ought to try.

At one point, he invited me to visit the garden in the fall and take home some samples. Toward the end of our conversation, he said, “Anytime you want to talk, let me know.”

For someone trying to get a business off the ground, that kind of support is a big deal.

I’ve told him that I feel like I’m standing on the shoulders of giants. I mean it. So much of what I’m sharing with people builds on research that he and his colleagues spent years doing.

I wanted to write this because people who enjoy SpiceQuest should know about him. When you read our tasting notes, compare two peppers, or discover a flavor you didn’t expect, his work has helped me make that experience possible.

Thank you, Paul, for taking my questions seriously, for encouraging me, and for being so willing to share what you know. I’m still learning from you.