Edinburgh's Killer Curry Didn't Murder Me

I have lived near the Kismot restaurant in Edinburgh for years, and heard whispered rumours about what is alleged to be the world's hottest curry. Like Willy Wonka's chocolate factory, the Kismot has an air of myth and mystery surrounding it.

The curry in question—dubbed the "Killer Curry"—is quite infamous. A 2011 charity Killer-eating contest sent several participants to hospital and left others writhing in pain and sickness. Food writer Gideon Burrows reported in Chilli Britain that Abdul, the manager, created a cordon outside to stop passers-by from slipping on the vomit.

As for the Killer's ingredients, we know it is made from the 17 of the hottest chilies in the world, and that you need to order it 24 hours in advance so the ingredients can be prepared. It contains Naga Morich chilies that the proprietor of Kismot sent over from a relative in Sylhet, a mountainous region in the East of Bangladesh.

Burrows—the only writer thus far allowed a glimpse into the heart of the Kismot operation—describes some of the cooking process: "It starts with a handful of each of Naga Morich chilies, Bhut Nagas, and Bhut Jolokias. They're all blended until there's about a litre of base mixture. The base is then slow-cooked, sending hot and sharp fumes around the kitchen."

As if it wasn't enough, even more chilies are added. Somehow, chili oil and chili powder are added into the mixture, too. The only other ingredient is onion.

"We can tell you some of the recipe, but not all," Abdul tells me, smiling, when I decided to try the curry myself.

He welcomes me and my friends, David and Julia, to the restaurant with poppadoms, a tray of pickles, and a wonderfully sweet, sharp mint yoghurt in a silver jug. Abdul takes pride in bringing the beautifully presented dishes over. He does not look like a man who orchestrates the eating of super-hot curries. And, as for vomiting in or outside the restaurant, it's almost unthinkable—an insult to this kind, mild-mannered man who built this business with his family, all of whom believe in creating authentic curry dishes.

"I've not tried it myself—I prefer sweet things," Abdul tells me. "But some people in the family have. They say it hurts them, but it's good pain. They can't stop eating it, but every time they take a spoon, they know it's going to hurt."

But why would people voluntarily subject themselves to an experience they know will be intensely painful? No mammals, other than humans, seek out chilies; the plants' defence mechanism works to protect it against the mammalian digestive system, which, unlike the avian one, will destroy the seeds before expelling them, giving the plant little or no chance of reproductive success.

Capsaicin is the chemical in chilies that causes pain, and which is measured on the Scoville heat scale. Capsaicin does not burn, but it cleverly imitates burning, binding to a receptor on mammalian tongues called the VR1 receptor, which senses heat. In doing so, the chemical tricks the brain into believing the mouth is burning, even though the mind may know this is not the case.

To know why chilies create a burning sensation however, does not tell us why we eat it. For millennia, people throughout the world have sought chilies as an addition to their food, in spite—or possibly because of—the extreme pain it causes.

Rather than delving into dry scientific literature, I posed the question to Facebook for some anecdotal evidence: Why do people eat hot chilies?

Within minutes, I had numerous answers ranging from "It just feels really, really good" to "It's just a macho male thing."

One friend, Lucy, wrote and told me of how she entered a chili-eating contest in Coimbra, Portugal, when passing through on holiday: "It was an informal competition on the outskirts of Coimbra, where people were bragging how much chili they could eat. They enticed me to enter and it was kind of fun. Someone even filmed our mouths to make sure we were biting the chilies, not just swallowing them. The next day my whole body felt on fire."

But why did Lucy and others take part? When Mary Roach travelled to a remote region in India to cover a Naga King chili-eating contest, she found that some people can better tolerate chilies than others—the receptors can be dulled by exposure to chili from an early age. What is scorching to some people can be only mild to others who have eaten chili since the age of four or five, sucking it in candy form.

Yet there is something else, too. The authors of a 2013 study entitled "Glad to be sad, and other examples of benign machoism" explored a phenomenon they term "hedonic reversal"—the conversion of an innately negative experience into something positive. A liking for chili is compared to a fondness for sad films. But sadness, like pain, is inherently a sign that something is amiss.

To watch tragedy gives us catharsis, without real suffering. To eat chili is to burn, without actually being on fire. Cognitively, you can separate what you are experiencing from the reality. A fast roller coaster ride imitates danger, but it is not, except in the case of a freak accident, truly life-threatening.

So do human beings like being tricked? Is vomiting (within safe limitations) the same as crying at a sad film—a cleansing ritual, a form of catharsis? We enjoy our bodies' response to these artificial horrors, the endorphins we get while eating chili, the fight-or-flight adrenaline rush we have when watching horror films, whilst still knowing, on some level, that really we are safe.

We order other curries alongside the Kismot Killer. My saag with spinach and mild spices is delicious, as is my friend Julia's kurma, which is crunchy with sweet pistachios. David's curry, a Balti, is the best he has ever tasted. The people who run Kismot clearly know their food, and I'm left thinking, Perhaps they don't need a curry like the Killer to make them stand out amongst the many Indian restaurants in Edinburgh.

Soon enough, though, the Killer is brought over by Abdul, who is wearing a World War II-style gas mask. The dish is red and steaming angrily. David says it smells "prickly" and I know what he means. It is like sitting near a cactus.

We look at it for a while before I dip in some garlic and coriander naan, and bite the smallest bit. I find it so spicy that I drop the bread and it lands in the silver jug of yoghurt sauce.

Julia tastes it. "It's not too bad," she says, but then it hits her and she reaches for the milk. Julia is Asian and grew up in a house where chilies were eaten "pretty much every night." She sees eating the Killer as "penance for all the times I've served my friends food they found too hot, because to me it's just normal."

The Killer, however, is too much for her.

David likens it to jumping in the deep end of a swimming pool. You just decide to go for it. He's OK for a few seconds, but then his eyes go huge, and he leans forward for the milk, before excusing himself for a long break in the bathroom.

We're unable to finish the Killer, though Julia keeps going back for more, eating her kurma alongside it to cool down.

"You don't have to do this to yourself," we tell her as she eats even more. She doesn't even like it, she says. It has no flavour, only heat.

As she eats, her face becomes pinker. But she keeps going, chomping the smallest mouthfuls.

Abdul comes to check on our progress, and smiles at Julia. "Someone ordering the Kurma and eating the Killer," he says.

If we finish the curry, it is free, but between the three of us, we hardly eat a quarter of it, in spite of knowing that the burning sensation is not actually dangerous.

"Try telling that to your digestive system," I say to Julia.

I feel guilty later on when she tells me she is in intense pain on the way home, but a couple of hours later, she feels much better. Her heart was racing, but as she walked to her flat, she suddenly felt euphoria kicking in to override the pain. Her body's response was an ancient evolutionary reward for pain, and maybe an explanation of why some people choose to eat really hot chilies.