Hot peppers aren’t for everyone, but that’s where the Scoville scale comes in handy. But even modern methodologies based on high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) can rate peppers in ways that confound a sweating hot sauce enthusiast. If the capsaicinoids—particularly capsaicin and dihydrocapsaicin—are tallied accurately, then why the varying perceived heat levels? While each sample contained the same levels of capsaicin and dihydrocapsaicin, participants reported a significantly wide range of perceived heat across the 10 peppers. Researchers then ran multiple more chemical composition analyses including nuclear magnetic resonance imaging to ultimately pinpoint another five naturally occurring compounds suspected of influencing each pepper’s perceived spice level.