Habanero

Habanero is the lantern-shaped fruit of Capsicum chinense, a species that looks like a chilli but flavours like tropical fruit with an engine under the hood. The cultivar cluster centred on the Yucatan Peninsula reaches 100,000 to 350,000 Scoville heat units -- the classic orange habanero lands around 200,000 SHU, the red savina near the top of that band -- driven by capsaicin and dihydrocapsaicin at roughly 0.2 to 0.4 percent of dry weight. What separates it from a generic chilli is the aromatic profile: C. chinense carries 2-methylbutyl 3-methylbutanoate and related esters that read as mango, peach and orange blossom, volatiles absent from Capsicum annuum. The fruit is three to six centimetres long, thin-walled, ripening from green through yellow to orange or red, usually picked orange for the benchmark Yucatecan flavour. Mexico's Denominacion de Origen Chile Habanero de la Peninsula de Yucatan, granted in 2010, covers Yucatan, Campeche and Quintana Roo and is the only legally protected habanero origin on the planet. Scotch bonnet, the Jamaican cousin, is the same species and often interchangeable.