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Pungency () refers to the taste of food commonly referred to as spiciness, hotness or heat, found in foods such as

chili pepper Chili peppers (also chile, chile pepper, chilli pepper, or chilli), from Nahuatl '' chīlli'' (), are varieties of the berry-fruit of plants from the genus ''Capsicum'', which are members of the nightshade family Solanaceae, cultivated for ...

s. Highly pungent tastes may be experienced as unpleasant. The term piquancy () is sometimes applied to foods with a lower degree of pungency that are "agreeably stimulating to the palate". Examples of piquant food include mustard and

curry A curry is a dish with a sauce seasoned with spices, mainly associated with South Asian cuisine. In southern India, leaves from the curry tree may be included. There are many varieties of curry. The choice of spices for each dish in trad ...

Terminology

In colloquial speech, the term "pungency" can refer to any strong, sharp smell or flavor. However, in scientific speech, it refers specifically to the "hot" or "spicy" quality of

s. It is the preferred term by scientists as it eliminates the potential ambiguity arising from use of "hot" and "spicy", which can also refer to temperature or the presence of

spice A spice is a seed, fruit, root, bark, or other plant substance primarily used for flavoring or coloring food. Spices are distinguished from herbs, which are the leaves, flowers, or stems of plants used for flavoring or as a garnish. Spices a ...

s, respectively. For instance, a pumpkin pie can be both hot (out of the oven) and spicy (due to the common inclusion of spices such as

cinnamon Cinnamon is a spice obtained from the inner bark of several tree species from the genus '' Cinnamomum''. Cinnamon is used mainly as an aromatic condiment and flavouring additive in a wide variety of cuisines, sweet and savoury dishes, breakf ...

nutmeg Nutmeg is the seed or ground spice of several species of the genus ''Myristica''. ''Myristica fragrans'' (fragrant nutmeg or true nutmeg) is a dark-leaved evergreen tree cultivated for two spices derived from its fruit: nutmeg, from its seed, an ...

allspice Allspice, also known as Jamaica pepper, myrtle pepper, pimenta, or pimento, is the dried unripe berry of ''Pimenta dioica'', a midcanopy tree native to the Greater Antilles, southern Mexico, and Central America, now cultivated in many warm par ...

, mace, and

clove Cloves are the aromatic flower buds of a tree in the family Myrtaceae, ''Syzygium aromaticum'' (). They are native to the Maluku Islands (or Moluccas) in Indonesia, and are commonly used as a spice, flavoring or fragrance in consumer products, ...

s), but it is not ''pungent''. (A food critic may nevertheless use the word ''piquant'' to describe such a pie, especially if it is exceptionally well-seasoned.) Conversely, pure

capsaicin Capsaicin (8-methyl-''N''-vanillyl-6-nonenamide) ( or ) is an active component of chili peppers, which are plants belonging to the genus ''Capsicum''. It is a chemical irritant for mammals, including humans, and produces a sensation of burnin ...

is pungent, yet it is not naturally accompanied by a hot temperature or spices. As the Oxford, Collins, and Merriam-Webster dictionaries explain, "piquancy" can refer to mild pungency, that is, flavors and spices that are much less strong than chilli peppers, including, for example, the strong flavor of some tomatoes. In other words, pungency always refers to a very strong taste whereas piquancy refers to any spices and foods that are "agreeably stimulating to the palate", in other words to food that is spicy in the general sense of "well-spiced". Mildly pungent or sour foods may be referred to as tangy.

Applications

Pungent substances have been used as analgesics and for flavoring foods.

In foods

Pungency is often quantified in scales that range from mild to hot. The

Scoville scale The Scoville scale is a measurement of the pungency (spiciness or "heat") of chili peppers, as recorded in Scoville heat units (SHU), based on the concentration of capsaicinoids, among which capsaicin is the predominant component. The scale i ...

measures the pungency of

s, as defined by the amount of

they contain. Pungency is not considered a taste in the technical sense because it is carried to the brain by a different set of nerves. While taste nerves are activated when consuming foods like chili peppers, the sensation commonly interpreted as "hot" results from the stimulation of

somatosensory In physiology, the somatosensory system is the network of neural structures in the brain and body that produce the perception of touch (haptic perception), as well as temperature (thermoception), body position ( proprioception), and pain. It ...

fibers in the mouth. Many parts of the body with exposed membranes that lack taste receptors (such as the nasal cavity, genitals, or a wound) produce a similar sensation of heat when exposed to pungent agents. The pungent sensation provided by chili peppers,

black pepper Black pepper (''Piper nigrum'') is a flowering vine in the family Piperaceae, cultivated for its fruit, known as a peppercorn, which is usually dried and used as a spice and seasoning. The fruit is a drupe (stonefruit) which is about in dia ...

and other spices like

ginger Ginger (''Zingiber officinale'') is a flowering plant whose rhizome, ginger root or ginger, is widely used as a spice and a folk medicine. It is a herbaceous perennial which grows annual pseudostems (false stems made of the rolled bases of ...

and

horseradish Horseradish (''Armoracia rusticana'', syn. ''Cochlearia armoracia'') is a perennial plant of the family Brassicaceae (which also includes mustard, wasabi, broccoli, cabbage, and radish). It is a root vegetable, cultivated and used worldwi ...

plays an important role in a diverse range of cuisines across the world, such as Korean, Burmese, Turkish, Jamaican,

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, Hungarian, Spanish,

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, Burmese, Filipino (particularly Bicolano), Indonesian, Lao,

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, Malaysian,

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, Peruvian,

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, Pakistani,

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, Southwest Chinese (including

Sichuan cuisine Sichuan cuisine, alternatively romanized as Szechwan cuisine or Szechuan cuisine (, Standard Mandarin pronunciation: ), is a style of Chinese cuisine originating from Sichuan Province. It has bold flavours, particularly the pungency and spici ...

), Sri Lankan, Vietnamese, and Thai cuisines.

Mechanism

Pungency is sensed via chemesthesis, the sensitivity of the skin and mucous membranes to chemical substances. Substances such as

piperine Piperine, along with its isomer chavicine, is the alkaloid responsible for the pungency of black pepper and long pepper. It has been used in some forms of traditional medicine. Preparation Due to its poor solubility in water, piperine is typi ...

, and thiosulfinates can cause a burning or tingling sensation by inducing a

trigeminal nerve In neuroanatomy, the trigeminal nerve ( lit. ''triplet'' nerve), also known as the fifth cranial nerve, cranial nerve V, or simply CN V, is a cranial nerve responsible for sensation in the face and motor functions such as biting and che ...

stimulation together with normal taste reception. The pungent feeling caused by

allyl isothiocyanate Allyl isothiocyanate (AITC) is an organosulfur compound (formula CH2CHCH2NCS). This colorless oil is responsible for the pungent taste of mustard, radish, horseradish, and wasabi. This pungency and the lachrymatory effect of AITC are mediated thr ...

, capsaicin, piperine, and

allicin Allicin is an organosulfur compound obtained from garlic, a species in the family Alliaceae. It was first isolated and studied in the laboratory by Chester J. Cavallito and John Hays Bailey in 1944. When fresh garlic is chopped or crushed, th ...

is caused by activation of the heat thermo- and chemosensitive TRP ion channels including

TRPV1 The transient receptor potential cation channel subfamily V member 1 (TrpV1), also known as the capsaicin receptor and the vanilloid receptor 1, is a protein that, in humans, is encoded by the ''TRPV1'' gene. It was the first isolated member of th ...

and TRPA1 nociceptors. The pungency of chilies may be an adaptive response to microbial pathogens.

References

External links