Chili Powder: What’s in the Blend, How Hot It Is, and Who Invented It

Is your chili powder a blend or pure ground chile? In the United States, it’s a blend: ground dried chile, usually ancho, with cumin, oregano, garlic and usually salt. A recipe from outside North America that calls for “chilli powder” usually means chile alone, which is how the international food standard treats it. The American blend was first sold in 1890s Texas, and who sold it first is still disputed between William Gebhardt of New Braunfels and a Fort Worth grocer, DeWitt Clinton Pendery.

At a glance

Two things called chili powder

The American blend. USDA’s Commercial Item Description for spices, the specification federal buyers use, says chili powder should include, but isn’t limited to, ground chili pepper, cumin, oregano, salt and garlic powder, and that it has to be reddish-brown and free of lumps.¹ Saveur describes it the same way: dried chiles, usually ancho, with oregano, cumin, garlic and sometimes salt.² PepperScale likewise says store-bought chili powders often use a lower-heat pepper like poblano (the fresh form of ancho) as their chile base, which is why they’re usually mild.⁶ Those words “not limited to” matter. Every maker sets its own recipe, and USDA lists chili powder separately from plain ground red pepper and paprika.

Pure ground chile. The Codex Alimentarius standard for dried chilli pepper and paprika (CXS 353-2022) covers chile that’s whole, crushed or flaked, or ground to a powder, made by drying the fruits of Capsicum species.⁷ Under that standard, ground chilli is chile alone. It doesn’t mention spice blends at all. Korean gochugaru, single-chile powders like ancho, guajillo, pasilla and chile de árbol, and most “chilli powder” sold outside North America belong in this group.

A recipe from outside North America that calls for “chilli powder” usually means the second kind, with no cumin or oregano. Check where the recipe comes from and read the label.

Flavor and what drives it

A typical American chili powder tastes earthy and warm first, from the cumin, with a mild, slightly sweet and raisiny chile base and a green, faintly bitter edge from the oregano. Garlic and salt round it out. Any given brand can lean hotter, smokier or saltier.

Each ingredient brings its own chemistry. See the profiles for details:

• Chile. Ancho is the chile Saveur names as the usual one in the blend,² and the Chile Pepper Institute at New Mexico State University describes it as sweet and smoky with hints of dried fruit.⁸ The heat comes from capsaicinoids; see cayenne pepper for how chile heat is measured.
• Cumin. Its smell comes from its essential oil, led by cuminaldehyde. See cumin.
• Oregano. Many Southwestern recipes use Mexican oregano, which is a different plant. See Mexican oregano vs. oregano.

How hot is chili powder?

The figures below don’t measure the same thing, so they’re shown side by side and not combined:

How to read this:

• The USDA range is a purchasing specification, the heat a federal buyer will accept. It tells you the American blend is meant to be mild, but it’s not a survey of what’s on store shelves.¹
• The Codex figure applies to chile, not blends. The standard uses Scoville heat units as its pungency test and draws the line between paprika (480 SHU or less), hot paprika (above 480 and below 900) and chilli pepper (900 or more).⁷ A blend cut with cumin, oregano and salt falls outside it.
• Pure chile powders depend on the chile. See cayenne pepper for that chile’s published figures and what they cover.

History

The word. “Chili” came into English in the 1640s from Nahuatl chilli, the native name for the peppers. The plant is American. The native range of Capsicum annuum runs from the southern United States to Brazil and the Caribbean, and a 2014 study combining genetics, ecology, archaeobotany and historical linguistics found that all four lines of evidence pointed to domestication in central-east Mexico.⁹ You’ll often see two other claims attached to this history: that people have eaten chiles since 7500 BCE, and that Columbus named them “peppers” because they tasted like black pepper. We couldn’t trace either one to a source.

Who invented chili powder? It’s usually credited to William Gebhardt of New Braunfels, Texas, but the record supports a rival and more than one date:

• DeWitt Clinton Pendery, a Fort Worth grocer, was marketing a chili blend called Chiltomaline in local newspapers by 1890, according to D Magazine.⁵ Saveur also dates his seasoning powder to 1890 and says it didn’t catch on. Barry Popik gives about 1890.²¹⁰
• William Gebhardt opened a café in New Braunfels in 1892, imported ancho chiles from Mexico and ground them over and over in a meat grinder.⁴ The year he started selling the powder varies: 1894 in the New Braunfels Herald-Zeitung’s account,¹¹ or 1896, when he registered the Eagle Brand trademark and opened a factory in San Antonio.⁴¹² He first sold it as “Tampico Dust.”¹¹¹² Chili historian Joe Cooper credited Gebhardt with being the first to grind dried chiles in a meat grinder.⁵
• The earliest dated advertisement Barry Popik found for “Gebhardt’s Chili Powder” ran in the Laredo Daily Times on 20 October 1897.¹⁰

What went into Gebhardt’s first blend is thinly documented. The 2019 Herald-Zeitung article says he ground chiles with cumin seed, oregano and black pepper,¹¹ while the UTSA Libraries collection description names only ancho.⁴ Popular accounts also say Gebhardt’s powder made Tex-Mex cooking popular across the United States. We found no source that shows that.

How it is used

• Chili con carne. The defining use. For how chili powder works alongside whole chiles, cumin and oregano in different styles of chili, see best spices for chili.
• Tex-Mex fillings and sauces. It seasons the meat for tacos, burritos and enchiladas. See taco seasoning, spices for taco meat and fajita seasoning.
• Rubs. It’s a common base for barbecue dry rubs. See BBQ spices.

Technique. Many cooks warm chili powder briefly in oil before adding liquid, to take the raw edge off the cumin and chile. Watch it, though: it scorches quickly over high heat.

Salt. Most blends contain salt (USDA lists it as an ingredient), so taste before salting a dish that’s heavy on chili powder.

Buying and quality

• Read the ingredient list. It tells you which kind you’re buying. A label that lists only chile is pure ground chile. One that lists cumin, oregano and garlic is the American blend.
• Color. The USDA specification calls for reddish-brown. A dull, brownish-gray powder has probably faded.
• Heat. Few retail jars state a heat level. “Hot” and “mild” mean whatever each maker says they mean.

Storage

Keep it airtight, dark and away from the stove. We found no published shelf-life figure from a regulator or standards body for chili powder. PepperScale says to expect up to three years if it’s stored correctly, with the heat fading gradually even so. That’s a publication’s rule of thumb, not a tested figure.¹³ It notes that a dry powder usually won’t go rancid, that mold or clumping from moisture means it’s time to toss it, and that a jar more than a year old is worth smelling and tasting before you use it. If the color has dulled and the cumin smell is faint, replace it.

Nutrition and health

USDA FoodData Central’s chili powder entry (one SR Legacy record) puts 1 teaspoon at 2.7 g.³ Per teaspoon, that works out to:

In seasoning amounts, chili powder is a minor source of these nutrients. Salt is one of the ingredients USDA’s specification lists for the blend.

Capsaicin. The strongest human evidence on capsaicin is about a prescription skin patch, not food. A 2017 Cochrane systematic review found moderate-quality evidence that a high-concentration (8%) capsaicin patch gave moderate pain relief to a minority of people with postherpetic neuralgia, with about 10% more people much or very much improved than on placebo.¹⁵ None of the sources we reviewed supported claims that chili powder or its ingredients aid digestion, fight fungi or reduce inflammation, and we’re not claiming chili powder treats or prevents any disease.

Safety

• Mycotoxins (EU). EU law caps ochratoxin A at 20 µg/kg in dried Capsicum fruits, a category it says includes chilli powder, cayenne and paprika, and sets 5.0 µg/kg for aflatoxin B1 and 10.0 µg/kg for total aflatoxins in dried Capsicum.¹⁶ The regulation’s wording covers chile products. It doesn’t address blends.
• Handling. Wash your hands after handling chile powders and keep them away from your eyes.

Substitutes and comparisons

• Chili powder substitutes
• Paprika vs. chili powder
• Single chiles and powders: ancho powder, chipotle powder, cayenne pepper, paprika, red pepper flakes
• The other ingredients: cumin, oregano