Have you heard of UMAMI?! The Fifth Taste!

The flavour of food is determined by a number of different factors including taste, smell, colour, temperature and overall appearance, as well as by physiological or psychological conditions. Some of the most important factors are the basic tastes of sweet, sour, salty, bitter and umami.
It was Japanese scientist Dr. Kikunae Ikeda who first discovered that glutamic acid, an amino acid, was responsible for the umami taste of Konbu.
Although there is no English word for it, umami is a savoury taste imparted by glutamate and ribonucleotides, including inosinate and guanylate, which occur naturally in many foods including meat, fish, vegetables and dairy products.
The taste of umami itself is subtle. It blends well with other tastes to expand and round out flavours. Most people don’t recognise umami when they encounter it, but it can be detected when eating ripe tomatoes, parmesan cheese, cured ham, mushrooms, meat and fish. Umami plays an important role making food taste delicious.
The discovery of umami

Umami discovered by a Japanese scientist
Stock made from konbu (kelp) has long been an indispensable part of Japanese cuisine. It has also long been known that the active ingredients contained within konbu hold the key to its delicious taste. This did not escape the attention of Dr. Kikunae Ikeda of Tokyo Imperial University, and he undertook research to ascertain the true nature of this ‘deliciousness’. In 1908, Ikeda succeeded in extracting glutamate from konbu. He discovered that glutamate was the main active ingredient in konbu and coined the term 'umami' to describe its taste.

Turning umami into a globally-recognized term
In the wake of glutamate, other ingredients that offer the umami taste, namely inosinate which is found in bonito flakes, and guanylate which is present in shiitake mushroom stock, were discovered. The four basic tastes of sweet, sour, salty and bitter have been widely recognised for hundreds of years, but it wasn’t until the 1980’s that various studies proved that umami, found in glutamate, actually constituted a legitimate fifth basic taste. Since then, umami’s status as ‘the fifth taste’ has been recognised internationally

Our first encounter with umami

The milk with which a mother feeds her newborn baby is rich in glutamates, so one could say that breast milk is our first encounter with umami.
Our sense of taste acts as a signal to our body that we should take in essential nutrients.
It is known that while babies dislike sourness and bitterness, they like the hearty taste of, for example, vegetable soup, which includes sweetness and umami.

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Umami culture around the world

A comparison of umami ingredients from the East and the West
Umami is actually used in various forms all over the world. In Asia, umami is mainly found in beans and grain, fermented seafood-based products, shiitake mushrooms, konbu and dried seafood. In Western cuisine, there are also fermented or cured products derived from meat and dairy products, namely ham and cheese. The most well-known ingredient is the tomato.

Asian fermented seasonings
Different types of fermented seasoning can be found throughout the world. Fish sauces such as Num Pla in Thailand and Nuoc Mum in Vietnam, along with a range of fermented products typified by miso and soy sauce, have long been used and appreciated in Asian countries.
Fermented condiments are made by adding salt to fish, beans, grains, etc., and allowing them to ferment. During the fermentation process, proteins are broken down into their constituent amino acids, and a condiment which contains high quantities of glutamate is produced. Particularly in Asian countries with a tradition of wet rice cultivation, daily cooking which does not include the addition of seasonings is unimaginable. This is a particular characteristic of countries where white rice, vegetables and fish form the staple diet. Rice based diets and simple forms of umami are very closely linked.

Fermented foods in Ancient Rome
Throughout the Ancient Roman Empire, fermented fish sauces called garem and liquamen were used as seasonings. These ingredients were equally as important as wine and olive oil. They were produced in the same way as the fermented condiments of South East Asia, with fish such as sardines and mackerel being salted and fermented. In particular, the amber-coloured garem extracted first from the fermentation process was most highly prized.
The famous ‘Apecius Cookbook’ of Ancient Rome contains many recipes where, in times when there was no sugar or salt, garem was frequently used. One could say that garem was prized as a condiment which combined umami and saltiness. The use of garem died out along with the Roman Empire, however anchovy paste and sauce can be seen as its modern counterpart.

The worldwide permeation of the umami taste of tomatoes
Tomatoes, which originated in South America, were brought to Europe when Columbus discovered the continent. It appears that they were originally used for medicinal purposes, but in Italy they underwent a re-evaluation, and were used as a foodstuff, forming the basis of a wide variety of dishes, and are now an indispensable ingredient of Italian cuisine.
In the UK, Worcester Sauce was made from tomatoes and a wide variety of other vegetables, and this was eventually exported to America, along with tomato sauce and paste, where a variety of processed foods such as ketchup and chilli sauce were produced. Today, tomatoes are one of the most widely produced vegetables on the planet and their umami taste is appreciated all over the world.

The synergistic effect of umami is employed in stock all over the world
Stock is the basis of cooking all over the world. Various kinds of stock are made using a variety of ingredients, with konbu and bonito flakes being used in Japanese ‘dashi’, and meat and vegetables used in Western ‘bouillon’ and Chinese ‘tan’. It can be said of all these types of stock, however, that they skilfully combine and draw out the umami flavour of the glutamate contained in konbu and vegetables and the inosinate found in bonito flakes and meat.
Although the synergistic effect of umami was only discovered scientifically in 1960, this effect was being put to good use all over the world long before this in the form of stock.
About UMAMI:
Gerry Diver is the webmaster of http://www.silvermediaservices.com,an online recipe library featuring original recipes, as well as several recipes contributed by professional Chefs.