The Hungarian wax pepper is a pastel yellow chile pepper also known as the hot yellow pepper or hot wax pepper. The Hungarian wax is closely related to the mild banana pepper. These peppers appear so much alike they cannot usually be distinguished except by taste. The Hungarian wax pepper tapers to a rounded point and averages about 6 inches (15cm) in length and is about 1 1/2 inches (3.8cm) wide.

Hungarian wax peppers are medium hot, with heat scores that range between 5,000 and 15,000 Scoville heat units. How high a chile scores on the heat scale is determined by high-performance liquid chromatography measurement of how many parts per million of capsaicin it contains. This figure is then converted into the historic Scoville heat units that signify how much dilution is necessary to drown out the chile’s heat. The heat level of a chile is given as a range because it can vary depending on how and where the pepper was cultivated.