Hot chilli peppers have been credited with helping to lose weight, inducing labour and relieving pain. But until Wilbur Scoville, there was no objective way of measuring how hot chillies really are.
Scoville, an American chemist born 151 years ago on Friday, is responsible for the "Scoville organoleptic test", a scale of "hotness" that has been the definitive rating of how spicy a chilli is for more than 100 years.
By clicking the mouse at the correct point on a sliding bar, you can fire ice cream at the offending chilli to neutralise it, with the game getting more difficult as they get hotter.
The Scoville scale, which measures the concentration of capsaicin - the active component that gives chillies their hotness - runs from the bell pepper, with a rating of zero Scoville heat units (or SHU), to the 16 million that represents pure capsaicin.
Capsaicin is the compound that gives you the characteristic burning sensation in your mouth, when you eat chillies.
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