Oh My, Umami

About author / Amy Powell

World traveler; gourmet 30 minute meals; lover of exotic ingredients; winner on FoodTV's Chefs vs City; graduate French Culinary Institute. Her recipes will tantalize your taste buds.

We all know the four basic tastes: sweet, sour, salty, and bitter. But did you know there is a fifth taste as well? You mostly likely experience this taste everyday and don’t even realize it. When you bite into a piece of aged parmesan cheese you should get a little salty, but most likely it is not sour, sweet, or bitter. But something makes that cheese taste, well, yummy. That thing you taste is umami.

If you are not familiar with the fifth taste, you are not alone. In fact, the idea of there being just four tastes dates back to Democritus, a Greek philosopher born in the fifth century BCE. Prior to Democritus, the tastes sweet, sour, and salty were widely acknowledged. Democritus added bitter to that group and so it remained that all tastes were made up of a combination of those four flavors until less than 200 years ago.

In the late 19th century, half way around the world from each other, the French chef Auguste Escoffier and the Japanese chemist Kikunae Ikeda, were both contemplating the existence of a fifth taste. In France, Escoffier had recently broken with the traditional grandiose buffets concocted by his predecessors and had begun rethinking the kitchen, focusing on cooking to order with rich concentrated flavors. One of Escoffier’s main contributions to the revolution of Western cuisine was veal stock. It was not sweet, salty, bitter, or sour, but its concentrated flavor was delicious and that deliciousness was used to enhance everything from soups to sauces.

Meanwhile in Japan, Ikeda the chemist was contemplating his bowl of dashi, a seaweed based broth common to Japanese cuisine, and he too noted that although this flavor profile did not fit into the category of sweet, salty, sour or bitter, it was an essential tasty element to many Japanese foods. Ikeda called this taste umami, or “yummy.”

But what is umami exactly? Ikeda the chemist proposed in the article he published for the Chemical Society of Tokyo that the “yummy” taste was glutamic acid. Glutamate occurs in most living things. When these things die, think the ripening of a tomato or the cooking of meat, those glutamates begin to break down. The result is L-glutamate and it just so happens that modern scientists have discovered within the last decade the existence of L-glutamate receptors on the tongue: the fifth taste.

Umami is that savory element common to meats, aged cheese, mushrooms, ripened tomatoes, and soy sauce among other things. When Escoffier made his veal stock he was concentrating the “yummy” glutamates. Dashi, another broth, is another example of concentrating glutamates, or umami. One might also think of Italian sauces that call for an anchovy or two. When eating the finished sauce we would never peg the flavor as anchovy, but that little cured fish gives a big dose of umami to the final dish.

A well composed dish usually involves a balance of sweet, salty, bitter, and sour. If you are really looking to find the yummy factory, don’t forget about that fifth taste. It might be some sautéed mushrooms in a fall steak salad with a splash of soy sauce in the dressing. Or try a dash of nam pla (fish sauce) added to rich beef stock being prepped for phò. If you are making an all-day pot of grandma’s tomato sauce, break up an anchovy or two into the garlic and olive oil before the sun-ripened tomatoes reach the pan. When that sauce meets the pasta with a sprinkling of aged Parmigiano-Reggiano, you will have layer upon layer of umami deliciousness.

To think that for as long as people have been eating food for pleasure, (perhaps most of human existence), the fifth taste has gone unrecognized until so recently. Food has been yummy but we never knew that in fact there was an actual “yumminess” receptor on the tongue that signaled to our brain when L-glutamates were present. When looking to cook something delicious, look no further than umami and your tongue will surely thank you.

Serves/Makes: 4

***Steak***

• 4 ounces crimini mushrooms
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 clove garlic
• salt and pepper
• 12 ounces beef sirloin

***Vinaigrette***

• 1 lime, juiced
• 2 tablespoons rice wine vinegar
• 2 tablespoons minced ginger
• 1 clove garlic
• 1 serrano chile, seeded and minced
• 1 teaspoon sugar
• 1 tablespoon soy sauce
• 1 tablespoon sesame oil
• 1/3 cup vegetable oil

***Salad***

• 8 cups fresh baby spinach