Capsanthin
Also written capsanthin and capsorubin, capsorubin, capsicum carotenoids
Quick answer
The red carotenoid of ripe peppers — the reason paprika, Kashmiri chilli and gochugaru are bought for their colour, and the reason they must be kept in the dark.
What it does
Capsanthin, with the related capsorubin, gives ripe Capsicum fruit its deep red. It has no flavour and no aroma: it is purely a colourant, and it is entirely independent of capsaicin, which is why a chilli can be brilliantly red and completely mild. That independence is the whole basis of several spice industries — Kashmiri chilli, Hungarian and Spanish paprika, and Korean gochugaru are all cultivars selected to maximise colour while keeping heat within a usable range, so that they can be used by the spoonful.
How it behaves when cooked
Four properties of the molecule, and what they mean at the stove.
- Volatility
- low
- Fat solubility
- high
- Water solubility
- low
- Heat stability
- low
Carotenoids are strongly fat-soluble and not water-soluble at all, which is why paprika is stirred into hot fat to release its colour and why paprika added to a watery liquid gives a muddy orange suspension instead of a red dish. They are also unusually vulnerable to two things: light, which bleaches them steadily in a jar on a windowsill, and heat above a fairly low threshold, which destroys both the colour and the sugars in the same powder. This is why the Hungarian and Spanish instruction is universally to take the pan off the heat before the paprika goes in — a few seconds in genuinely hot fat turns paprika brown and bitter, and the bitterness cannot be removed. The combination of high fat solubility and low light stability is also why these are the spices where storage advice matters most: they lose their entire reason for existing to a sunny shelf while looking, at first, merely a little faded.
Spices that carry it
Recorded on the compound rather than on each spice, so the two cannot disagree.
- GochugaruPrincipal component
- Kashmiri chilliPrincipal component
- PaprikaPrincipal component
- Smoked paprikaPrincipal component
The graded property, and the reason the product is sold in tins: the carotenoids photo-degrade, so a faded tin has lost what it was graded on while still smelling strongly of smoke.
- Ají amarilloMajor component
Half the reason the chilli is used in quantity: a huancaína sauce is expected to be a particular yellow-orange, and the pigment survives the blanching that removes the heat because it is not water-soluble.
- Aleppo pepperMajor component
- AnchoMajor component
- Cayenne pepperMajor component
- Piment d'EspeletteMajor component
- GuajilloMajor component
- Chile de árbolContributing component
- Calabrian chilliContributing component
- Chilli flakesContributing component
- Chilli powderContributing component
- MulatoContributing component
- PasillaContributing component
- RocotoContributing component
Not to be confused with
Compounds a reader is likely to take for this one, and why they differ.
Capsaicin
Colour and heat in the same fruit, bred independently and unrelated chemically. The single commonest wrong inference about chillies is that a redder one is a hotter one.
Annatto (bixin)
The other red-orange spice colourant, from an unrelated plant, used for much the same purpose in Latin American and Caribbean cooking. It is not a capsicum carotenoid and it colours towards orange rather than red.
Questions this page answers
- what is capsanthin
- what does capsanthin do
- which spices contain capsanthin
- what is capsorubin
- what is capsicum carotenoids