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Pungency is the condition of having a strong, sharp smell or taste that is often so strong that it is unpleasant. Pungency is the technical term used by scientists to refer to the characteristic of food commonly referred to as spiciness or hotness and sometimes heat, which is found in foods such as chili peppers.
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The term piquancy /ˈpiːkənsi/ 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 some strongly flavored tomatoes, as well as most foods that might be called "well-spiced."
Terminology
The terms "pungent" /pʌndʒənt/ and "pungency" are rarely used in colloquial speech but are preferred by scientists as they eliminate the potential ambiguity arising from use of the words "hot" and "spicy", which can also refer to temperature and the presence of spices, 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, nutmeg, allspice, mace, and cloves), 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 is pungent, yet it is not naturally accompanied by a hot temperature or spices.
As the Oxford, Collins, and Merriam-Webster dictionaries explain, the term "piquancy" refers to mild pungency and 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".
In foods
Pungency is often quantified in scales that range from mild to hot. The Scoville scale measures the pungency of chili peppers, as defined by the amount of capsaicin 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 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 and other spices like ginger and horseradish plays an important role in a diverse range of cuisines across the world, such as Korean, Persian, Turkish, Tunisian, Ethiopian, Hungarian, Indian, Burmese, Indonesian, Laotian, Singaporean, Malaysian, Bangladeshi, Mexican, Peruvian, Caribbean, Pakistani, Somali cuisine, Southwest Chinese (including Sichuan cuisine), Sri Lankan, Vietnamese, and Thai cuisines.
In popular culture
In animated cartoons and the like, pungency is often shown as a face turning red or as though a mouth were literally on fire, with such sight gags as flames and smoke coming out of the mouth and ears (sometimes accompanied by the sound of a train whistle) when someone consumes pungent food.
Mechanism
The scientific term for the effect of pungency is chemesthesis. Substances such as piperine and capsaicin cause a burning sensation by inducing a trigeminal nerve reaction together with normal taste reception. The pungent feeling caused by allyl isothiocyanate, capsaicin, piperine, and allicin is caused by activation of the heat thermo- and chemosensitive TRP ion channels including TRPV1 and TRPA1 nociceptors. The pungency of chilies may be an adaptive response to selection by microbial pathogens.