Utaste Wine & Food

Deliciousness — Far from a made-up word, it is the essence of the enigmatic flavor known as umami.

Remember in high school physiology class when the teacher talked about the senses? Each day was devoted to a different sense, and when the subject was taste, students would learn about the areas of the tongue where humans register sour, salty, bitter and sweet. Oftentimes the teacher would use a map of the tongue to illustrate where each of these flavors resided. And if the class was taught by one of the more progressive science teachers, they may have heard the term umami, also known as the fifth flavor.

Umami, which translates literally from Japanese as “deliciousness,” is described by the Umami Information Center as a “pleasant savory taste imparted by glutamate, a type of amino acid, and ribonucleotides, including inosinate and guanylate, which occur naturally in many foods, including meat, fish, vegetables and dairy products.” In explaining the nuances of this unique flavor, the website notes that “as the taste of umami itself 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 in making food taste delicious.” 

An important role indeed, and not just to ensure we enjoy our supper. The ability to perceive these flavors is the result of evolution’s ability to put a very fine point on our need to keep our bodies fueled. In other words, we taste sweet in search of sucrose as a source of energy, sour in order to detect food’s rate of spoilage (as well as to detect organic acids to accelerate metabolism), salty to detect needed minerals, bitter to alert us to harmful substances, and umami to signal protein and essential nutrients.

Not only is the ability to detect umami present at birth, but it is in fact the guiding flavor upon which all newborns rely to get themselves fed. How so? Because of their acute taste for umami, infants come to crave their mother’s breast milk – an extremely umami-flavored and glutamate-rich substance, not to mention the lone source of protein for most newborns. The only creature with higher glutamate content in their breast milk is the chimpanzee, with 38.9 (mg/100ml), as compared to 21.6 (mg/100ml) in humans.

The discovery of umami took place in the Tokyo lab of Dr. Kikunea Ikeda in 1908, when he isolated the amino acids that are the building blocks of the flavor. Through his research, he was able to demonstrate that glutamate was the key to the powerful flavors one apprehends when eating broths and other protein-rich, savory dishes. Further research determined that there was a significant nutritional benefit to be gained along with the flavor component. Additional laboratory research by Dr. Shintaro Kodama in 1913 and Dr. Akira Kuninaka in 1960 further broke down the essences of umami by pointing out that umami-rich foods are high in inosinate (a compound found in fish and meats) and guanylate (a substance that is abundant in natural foods, mainly mushrooms).

It is no wonder that Japanese scientists made these sensorial-scientific discoveries. A short inspection of the Japanese diet reveals an abundance of umami-rich foods, including green tea, various types of kelp, seaweed and dried fish, plus a wide range of seafood and several Japanese mushrooms. That said, umami is not exclusive to Japanese food – both tomatoes and parmesan cheese are rich in the flavor, which explains the deliciousness of much Italian cuisine.

So what does umami taste like, and how do you know when you taste it? Hiro Sone, the chef and owner of Ame in San Francisco and Terra in Napa Valley, describes umami as the “magical combination that happens when two plus two doesn’t equal four, but two plus two equals six.” In doing so, Sone captures the enigmatic nature of umami: It enhances other flavors, yet there is no easy way to describe how it tastes. Sone goes on to cite examples of the flavor of vegetables that have been cooked in veal stock, or the flavors produced by the combination of kelp and dried bonito flakes called dashi, which is the base of many Japanese soups and sauces. “In Japan, every meal you eat, you hear people say the word ‘umami,’” he adds.

Tim Hanni, CEO of the Napa Seasoning Co., offers a simple method to discover umami for one’s self. “Take a mushroom,” he says, “any kind of mushroom. Slice off a bite and eat it. In all likelihood, it will have sort of tasted bland or was nearly flavorless. Take the remaining portion of the mushroom and nuke it for 20 seconds. Allow the mushroom to cool and try another bite. The new, richer, more sumptuous flavor one will experience is umami.”

How the flavor was released in the mushroom was via a somewhat mysterious process best described as decay. As foods cook, or in some cases age (such as cheese), greater amounts of the three common components of umami (glutamate, inosinate and guanylate) are released. Many of the foods we enjoy have their flavors enhanced by being aged or allowed to decompose (think dry-aged beef). The levels of umami and sugars and other nutrients are at their highest in vegetables and fruit when they are at their ripest, thus making the flavors most pleasant to us and providing the maximum nutritional benefit.
Who would have thought that deliciousness was so essential to our survival?

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