The other day a friend and I were having a conversation about food and he happened to mention ‘Umami’, also known as the fifth flavour. My curiosity perked, I decided to find out more about this mysterious word.

We are all familiar with the 4 flavours – sweet, sour, salty and bitter. In fact most people have a particular fondness for one more than the other. I happen to be a sucker for Sour. But what if your tongue senses something that is neither sweet, sour, salty nor bitter? That’s the story of Umami.

A Japanese chemist, Kikunae Ikeda, while enjoying his bowl of seaweed soup struck about the idea that it tasted like nothing he knew, but was yet familiar and delicious. Luckily for us, Ikeda was a chemist and so he could find out more. Off to his lab he went and did. He wrote, “Common to asparagus, tomatoes, cheese and meat but… not one of the four well-known tastes.”

Ikeda wrote to the Chemical Society of Tokyo and called this mysterious ingredient glutamic acid but then changed it to ‘Umami’ which means “delicious” or “yummy” in Japanese.

Now years later, we know more. Umami is a pleasant savoury taste imparted by glutamate, a type of amino acid which occurs naturally in foods including meat, fish, vegetables and dairy products. According to the Umami Information Center (yes, there is one), as a taste it is subtle and blends well with other tastes to expand and round out flavors, most people don’t recognize umami when they encounter it, but it plays an important role making food taste delicious.

There you have it. Umami is something delicious to ponder about while you chew.

-N-