Unlocking the Fifth Taste
Try to describe umami and you are likely to sound as if you're talking
about a fifth dimension, rather than a fifth taste. Umami is often
described as a "meaty" taste, but some of nature's highest
concentrations are found not in meat at all, but in tomatoes,
mushrooms, seaweed, and parmesan cheese. Peas have about the same
amount as eggs. So what is it that "meaty" taste that all those
non-meaty items share?
Set beside the four short English words—sweet, salty, bitter, and sour—umami's three syllables generate a thicker set of sounds, not unlike like the taste itself. Perhaps the best way to think about umami is as a nutritive sensation that is difficult to pin down on its own but makes the other tastes come alive.
Some have described umami as simply, “savory,” but to do so, says David Kasabian, chef and author of "The Fifth Taste: Cooking with Umami," is missing the point. “Savory has come to mean the opposite of sweet to many people. Just because something isn't sweet doesn't make it umami,” he says.
Umami was identified in 1908 by a Japanese chemistry professor at Tokyo Imperial University, Kikunae Ikeda. Ikeda was interested in the chemical composition of Dashi—the seaweed broth at the basis of much Japanese cuisine—and hoped to reproduce and commercialize its taste as a seasoning. He found that after evaporating the water from the broth, he was left with brown crystals of glutamic acid, an amino acid. Ikeda patented a method for mass-producing the crystalline form of glutamic acid, or Monosodium Glutamate (MSG) and—with the help of the Ajinomoto company, which is still a major producer of MSG—the crystallized condiment went on the market by the following year. By the 1950s it was being sold in the US as a seasoning called "Ac'cent."
What makes something umami, from a scientific perspective, is protein. Protein is made up of amino acids, including glutamate. But umami comes from one particular form of glutamate: "free" glutamate. Most glutamate found in food is in a "bound" form, but it’s the free glutamate that we taste, that sends a clear message to the brain, informing us that we’re getting something crucial to life.
Since all meat is high in protein, you'd expect all meat to be high in umami, but that's not the case. A fresh piece of raw meat, for instance, has almost no umami taste because there is almost no free glutamate in it. From an evolutionary perspective, says Gary Beauchamp, Director of the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia, this makes sense. “If you're eating meat, you don't necessarily need something to convince you that you're eating protein,” he says. Umami, in other words, signals protein in foods where the presence of protein is not necessary obvious—a piece of cooked meat, for instance, or a non-meaty food like seaweed.
All tastes, including umami, are signals, according to Beauchamp. “The presumption," he says, "is the other four tastes arose to deal with really significant problems having to do with recognizing calories, recognizing sodium, which is crucial for life, and avoiding getting poisoned. And maybe umami is the protein signal.”
That might help explain the presence of high amounts of umami in breast milk, something our bodies know we need well before we do. Human breast milk has around 10 times more umami than cow's milk, a fact that makes sense when you consider the fact that cows don’t seem to need as much protein as humans.
But if umami is the protein signal, what does protein taste like? It's been said that the fifth taste often leaves the eater feeling satisfied, for no apparent reason. Perhaps, then, the craving to be satisfied by food is our body's way of telling us it needs protein. That awareness of the role umami plays in our palates might also explain certain cravings for meat, or at least, the occasional, uncontrollable desire to eat something kind of meat-esque.
Likely, that's why MSG is found in so many of today’s processed foods: It's good at making us think we’re eating something that will nourish us, even when the opposite is true. (And you won't always find "MSG" in the ingredients list, either. Free glutamates are also present in hydrolyzed vegetable proteins, soy extracts, and other additives that fall under the "natural flavorings" category.)
But calling umami a "protein" taste still doesn't quite cover it. Umami isn't simply a matter of what a food is, but how it is prepared. Broth and stock are critical—both are umami-rich. Searing meat before stewing, braising, or making soup not only browns the meat, it also releases the glutamate. That's why gravy is often tastier than the meat it’s intended to compliment. In the case of ham, the umami content is said to be 50 times higher when it is cured than raw. Aging protein, in general, tends to free the glutamate and bring out umami; in Asia that means Fish sauce, miso and soy sauce; in the West, it means things like parmesan cheese and aged meat.
Kumiko Ninomiya, Director of the Umami Information Center, has been studying umami for over 20 years. She points out that pure umami is not generally considered an attractive taste by itself—at least not in the west. Asked why it took so long for the world to catch up to Japan, Ninomiya says it goes back to seaweed.
“In Japan, broth prepared by dried seaweed, konbu, demonstrates to us a simple umami taste. The broth is used when making soups, cooking vegetables, etc. and is a very basic and indispensable ingredient in Japanese dishes. “
Here in the US, umami is still known as a meaty taste—with MSG best known as a product used to tenderize meat. Gary Beauchamp says that, in laboratory experiments at the Monell Chemical Senses Center, “the sensory descriptions [of umami] have been things like ‘tastes like chicken soup.’"
Still, the American love of meat is hardly limited to meats containing umami, the desire for meat must lie elsewhere. Says Beauchamp, “honestly, I don't think people really know what it is about the taste of meat that makes it so attractive.”
This article originally appeared in Meatpaper
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