SAUCEDEX°
Find your heat.
THE HOT SAUCE INDEX
Know your heat.
Discover hot sauces, understand Scoville ratings, compare flavours and track the bottles you’ve tried.
The hot sauce index.
SauceDex helps you understand how hot a sauce really is. Explore Scoville Heat Units (SHU), compare sauces, see the chilli behind the heat and track the bottles you have tried.
SauceDex helps you understand how hot a sauce really is. Explore Scoville Heat Units (SHU), compare sauces, see the chilli behind the heat and track the bottles you have tried.
Popular sauces
SHU figures are labelled by source confidence. Sauce heat can vary by batch and recipe.
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Explore sauces
Compare heat
Tap either sauce to cycle through sauces with a known SHU.
LEARN THE HEAT
The Scoville scale
A simple way to understand how much chilli heat you're dealing with.
SHU = Scoville Heat Units
The number represents the concentration of heat-producing capsaicinoids. A higher SHU means more potential heat.
Heat at a glance
0–1KMild
1K–5KWarm
5K–15KHot
15K–50KVery hot
50K–100KExtreme
100K+Challenge territory
Climb the scale
0 SHU
Bell pepper
No chilli heat.
~450 SHU
Frank's RedHot Original
A useful SauceDex baseline for everyday sauce.
2,500–5,000 SHU
TABASCO Original Red
Noticeable but approachable table-sauce heat.
2,500–8,000 SHU
Jalapeño pepper
Fresh chilli warmth can vary significantly pepper to pepper.
30,000–50,000 SHU
Cayenne pepper
A substantial step up in raw-pepper heat.
100,000–350,000 SHU
Habanero / Scotch bonnet
Serious chilli heat with fruity flavour.
1,000,000+ SHU
Superhot peppers
Extreme raw-pepper territory.
Why isn't the scale evenly spaced?
The useful range spans from zero into the millions, so SauceDex presents it like a heat ladder rather than a simple linear ruler. Moving from 500 to 5,000 SHU is a 10× increase.
The useful range spans from zero into the millions, so SauceDex presents it like a heat ladder rather than a simple linear ruler. Moving from 500 to 5,000 SHU is a 10× increase.
Sauce SHU ≠ pepper SHU.
A sauce containing habanero is diluted by its other ingredients, so the finished sauce can be far less hot than the pepper itself. SauceDex therefore stores sauce ratings separately and labels whether figures are official, reported, estimated or unverified.
A sauce containing habanero is diluted by its other ingredients, so the finished sauce can be far less hot than the pepper itself. SauceDex therefore stores sauce ratings separately and labels whether figures are official, reported, estimated or unverified.
SHU is a guide, not your experience.
Serving size, recipe, tolerance and what you're eating all affect perceived heat. That's why SauceDex also lets you rate how hot a sauce felt to you.
Serving size, recipe, tolerance and what you're eating all affect perceived heat. That's why SauceDex also lets you rate how hot a sauce felt to you.
Scan / Add sauce
SauceDex capture workflow — search the catalogue first, then add a missing bottle.
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Barcode & camera ready
This web prototype cannot identify bottles automatically yet, but this workflow is ready to connect to barcode/camera recognition next.
Add a missing sauce
User-added sauces stay on this device and are clearly marked as user supplied.
My sauces
Your personal hot-sauce shelf.