Ah yes, that’d do it for most scenarios I think.
mmmmmmm, mulled wine. I’m off on a two-week skiing holiday to Austria over xmas and new year so gluhwein will be forming a high percentage of my calorie intake…hurrah!
I disagree with that to some extent: We eat out in Indian restaurants and ‘hot’ dishes as in vindaloo or Madras are usually described as such. ‘Spicy’ dishes may still be hot, but nowhere near as ‘hot’ as that.
My wife does not like hot curries but she does like a spicy flavour. In a strange restaurant, we always ask.
Nope, as Chronos said, it’s spicy-hot; peppery and specially capsaiciny (other kinds of spicy would not be picante but fuerte, “strong”). The closest relationship between that and the rest of your words is through the multiple meanings of the verb picar, including “to pierce” (which is the one I think you were thinking of) and “to sting”. Picante food is food that “stings your mouth”.
(RAE lists 57 meanings for picar before starting on phrases, no way I was translating them all when only a few were relevant)
You’re really talking about your personal subjective experience, which rather falls out of GQ territory. The sensation of hotness generated by these substances is fundamentally the same in a scientific sense, which is what I am addressing.
It’s fine if you want to suggest coining additional words for finer grades of description, but “hot” is still perfectly appropriate to describe a common sensation generated by these compounds. Sweet, bitter, and sour also cover commonalities of sensation produced by particular foods. There is nothing wrong with using them just because specific foods have more complex tastes.
Out of curiosity, is there a specific word in Indian languages for the hotness produced by black pepper? If not, that would be very odd, since black pepper was used in Indian cooking far longer than Capsicum peppers, which are of New World origin and thus didn’t enter Indian cuisine until after 1492. What is the origin of the word for capsicum hotness?
This is correct. And I do remember an instance when this caused some confusion/discomfort in a restaurant when one member of our party (also a native German speaker) didn’t fully understand the warning when she was told that a particular dish was “hot”.
As far as I know, saffron does not affect any of the heat receptors, so it would not be hot.
Cloves contain eugenol, which can both activate and desensitize TRPV1. They might be considered hot to some extent.
Peppercorns contain piperine, which activates TRPV1. Black pepper is hot, but not as hot as capsaicin.
“Spicy” has a variety of meanings. From Merriam-Webster:
While “spicy” technically means containing any spice, its connotation generally implies strong or hot spices. Saffron is a very mild spice, and while saffron rice might in a broad sense be spicy most people would not use the word to refer to it. As the definition indicates, “spicy” generally applies to foods that generate the feeling of hotness. A dish containing cloves might be considered spicy; one containing lots of black pepper almost certainly would.
More here on the chemical basis of the sensation of hotness, and which compounds produce it.
This was going to be my response as well- I think of “spicy” as capsaicin/piperin induced heat, “spiced” as intensely flavored with non-heat inducing spices. The limitation in my language is apparent at mustard/horseradish/wasabi- I usually just use “horseradishy” to describe the intense kick-you-in-the-sinus feeling that disappears after a short time, unlike the lingering burn of peppers.
As an American, I’ve given up on trying to use “spicy” to mean “well spiced” or “with lots of spices,” since that doesn’t seem to be the way people generally use it. It almost always means, in my experience, either chile pepper hot, peppercorn hot, mustard hot, or horseradish hot. Possibly ginger hot, too–in other words, the type of spice that feels like an irritant, and that is often described as “hot.” I’ve never heard anyone describe something like, say, generously spiced fruit cake as being “spicy.” Or a Cincinnati chili. It’s got lots of spices, but if someone asked me if it was “spicy,” I would assume they are asking about whether it’s “hot,” not whether it has a lot of spices in it.
You are narrowing the scope of taste and flavor science to a level this renders it useless to describe human experience. It’s like saying that I’m being unreasonably unscientific by insisting on using the word “pink” because scientifically speaking, the color pink doesn’t exist.
[quoyr]Out of curiosity, is there a specific word in Indian languages for the hotness produced by black pepper?
[/quote]
I don’t know of one and I have not encountered it being described with the same word as that for chili hot either.
But come to think of it, black pepper as used in Indian cuisine—at least as I have experienced—is not used in a way that marks the end product with the hotness sensation. Black pepper is used as a spice/flavoring rather than got its piquancy.
(As an aside, In Bengali cuisine, one is not supposed to use chilis and black pepper in the same dish. They are seen as incompatible.)
I think you’ll find that a lot of what we consider as essential to Indian cuisine goes no further back than Vasco da Gama. I don’t think we as modern people would recognize pre-1498 Indian cuisine. Extensive trade with Europe transformed both societies.
No idea. But here are the Bengali words—
Gorom — temperature hot
Jhal — chili hot
Jhãjh — mustard hot
Moshla — spices
The OP is about how people describe the sensations they experience. Subjectivity is pretty near the heart of the matter.
I agree. I don’t think anyone has a problem with the general applicability of “hot” in this sense–the issue is whether “spicy” (and equivalents in other languages) does or should mean anything different.
“Pink” can be described in scientific terms. But I am not “narrowing the scope of taste and flavor science” in the least by recognizing that there is a basic commonality of sensation between the various “hot” spices. There is nothing wrong with using the word “sweet” to describe strawberries, honey, and cookies, all because they affect the same taste receptors, even if the overall taste sensation is different. Just because a word describes a general sensation doesn’t mean it’s not useful. “Hot” does convey useful information about food, since many people either like or dislike food on the basis of this sensation, regardless of whether it is produced by capsaicin or piperine or allyl isothiocyanate, and regardless of what other flavors may be present. If you wish to describe more specific sensations, you can use other words.
I would say “aromatic” for something that had a lot of spices in it but wasn’t “hot”.
“Spiced” also fits the bill, e.g. hot-cross buns can be described as “spiced”. And they are hot, too, but not “hot”. 
However, there is an objective reason why virtually everyone senses particular chemicals as providing the same sensation as heat: they affect the same receptors.
Norwegian:
Spicy (has lots of spices) - krydret (basically the same word, spices - krydder)
hot - sterk or sterkt krydret (strong, or strongly spiced)
Sure. That’s not all that’s going on, though, nor generally the most important thing; the right hot-spice for a dish isn’t just a matter of heat ratings.
In Croatian/Serbian, the word for spicy/hot is “ljuto”, which actually means “angry”.
Yes, my Grandfather (who had lived os quite a lot) was quite disappointed when he was introduced to Tex/Mex food. He was hoping for something with strong flavours, but all he got was something “hot”.
I dunno if there are separate words for it, but the food my inlaws eat has very strong flavours, and is not very “hot”.
Gardens Of Taxco, a popular Mexican restaurant in West Hollywood, is (was?) famous for not having printed menus; instead the jovial owner comes to your table and tells you the choices verbally. Depending on what’s available, at least a few dishes would invariably be described as "spicy. Not hot but spicy..
I do not believe I have ever confused a high temperature soup with one that contains an inordinate amount of capsaicin. I would be interested in whether any other human regularly does so. Assuming that confusion is rare, I would conclude that another word in English might be useful. That way, the speaker could verbally distinguish high temperature from chemically induced TRPV1 stimulation.
English has a gargantuan vocabulary; I’m surprised we haven’t gotten this sorted out yet.
What are they? Maybe we could import some of these.
Hm. Boiling-hot vs. spicy-hot?
But still, perception is very contextual. The same physical stimulus, delivered in a different context, can induce different sensations, and it’s those sensations debate on taste is concerned with. Consider the green and blue spirals in this picture: they’re very clearly distinct, differentiable colors. However, as you can see here, in fact, as regards RGB values etc., they’re the same. So reducing the sensation to a stimulus in isolation, i.e. the RGB values and hence, the reaction of color-sensitive cells in the eye, fails to capture the actual color sensation; for that, you have to include what other colors are perceived simultaneously, and adjacently. Likewise, in order to describe taste, reducing to merely the response of some pain receptor also may fail to capture the whole experience, since that activation may be part of quite distinct experiences.
