I have a story about heat and flavor. Often the flavor and heat ARE intertwined, if you “cool” the pepper you mute the flavor.
So I make lentil salad sometimes, it’s one of those dishes so much better than it should be - cooked al dente lentils, jalapeno, onion, carrot in a dressing of olive oil, mustard, lemon. My little kids loved it but would whine that it was too spicy. So my older daughter graciously de-seeded and took out the ribs of the jalapenos when helping make it one time and
They whined because it didn’t taste as good. The flavor was contained in the spicier part of the pepper.
Not everything should be spicy but it’s good to have a tolerance because some flavors are in those spicy foods that simply aren’t in the mild versions.
Chilis have a natural variation in heat, which depends a lot on growing conditions. Jalapeños can range from ~2000 to 8000 scovilles. The hotter ones don’t taste different, they just have more capsaicin. That molecule itself has no flavor, it just triggers the heat receptors in your cells.
Maybe your perception of the heat has gotten entangled with the flavor so cognitively one is less satisfying without the other. But that’s specific to your perception and not how it works at the chemical level of the plant or human sensory cells.
I have a story about heat and flavor. Often the flavor and heat ARE intertwined, if you “cool” the pepper you mute the flavor.
So I make lentil salad sometimes, it’s one of those dishes so much better than it should be - cooked al dente lentils, jalapeno, onion, carrot in a dressing of olive oil, mustard, lemon. My little kids loved it but would whine that it was too spicy. So my older daughter graciously de-seeded and took out the ribs of the jalapenos when helping make it one time and
They whined because it didn’t taste as good. The flavor was contained in the spicier part of the pepper.
Not everything should be spicy but it’s good to have a tolerance because some flavors are in those spicy foods that simply aren’t in the mild versions.
Chilis have a natural variation in heat, which depends a lot on growing conditions. Jalapeños can range from ~2000 to 8000 scovilles. The hotter ones don’t taste different, they just have more capsaicin. That molecule itself has no flavor, it just triggers the heat receptors in your cells.
Maybe your perception of the heat has gotten entangled with the flavor so cognitively one is less satisfying without the other. But that’s specific to your perception and not how it works at the chemical level of the plant or human sensory cells.