The fifth taste...
- brewerpaul
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The fifth taste...
We've always been told that there are only 4 tastes detectable by our taste buds: sweet, salty, sour and bitter. All the other sensations you get when you eat are actually scents detected by your nose (which is why food tastes so flat when you have a cold).
This morning on NPR I heard a story about a fifth detectable taste, which was discovered back in the early 1900's , called Umami. A Google search turned up tons of hits including:
http://www.umamiinfo.com/
Interesting!
This morning on NPR I heard a story about a fifth detectable taste, which was discovered back in the early 1900's , called Umami. A Google search turned up tons of hits including:
http://www.umamiinfo.com/
Interesting!
- djm
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Sorry, I guess I'm surprised you are only coming upon this now. Umami is the "supposed" sense that allows us to appreciate monosodium glutimate as a flavour-enhancing agent in our food. What I have always found fascinating about MSG is that no study has been able to pinpoint the chemical functions that cause so many adverse reactions in various people.
djm
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- chrisoff
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I think you've got it backwards. I always understood MSG is a way of artificially enhancing Umami in food. Glutamate is just one type of substance which creates the taste.djm wrote:Sorry, I guess I'm surprised you are only coming upon this now. Umami is the "supposed" sense that allows us to appreciate monosodium glutimate as a flavour-enhancing agent in our food. What I have always found fascinating about MSG is that no study has been able to pinpoint the chemical functions that cause so many adverse reactions in various people.
djm
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- falkbeer
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OK, it´s impossible to describe a tast, but could you give some example of food that gets a lot of taste from umami? Or some referens to a known taste (like, it tastes like burned gym shoes, or something like that )djm wrote:Sorry, I guess I'm surprised you are only coming upon this now. Umami is the "supposed" sense that allows us to appreciate monosodium glutimate as a flavour-enhancing agent in our food. What I have always found fascinating about MSG is that no study has been able to pinpoint the chemical functions that cause so many adverse reactions in various people.
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- gonzo914
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How about "savoriness"? In addition to being descriptive, it avoids the irritating inconsistency of "The five senses are bitterness, saltiness, sourness, sweetness and umami."
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- brewerpaul
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Yeah, I'm surprised that I never heard of it before too. My family views me as a sort of font of trivial informationdjm wrote:Sorry, I guess I'm surprised you are only coming upon this now. Umami is the "supposed" sense that allows us to appreciate monosodium glutimate as a flavour-enhancing agent in our food. What I have always found fascinating about MSG is that no study has been able to pinpoint the chemical functions that cause so many adverse reactions in various people.
djm
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http://www.umamiinfo.com/what_exactly_is_umami/falkbeer wrote:
OK, it´s impossible to describe a tast, but could you give some example of food that gets a lot of taste from umami? Or some referens to a known taste (like, it tastes like burned gym shoes, or something like that )
If you ever have had miso soup at a japanese restaurant, you're familiar with the umami taste. The soup stock is usually dashi, made with a combination of bonito flakes (dried fish) and konbu (seaweed), and has a very distinctive flavor. I used to weep bitterly over my thin, terrible home-made miso soup until I discovered dashi.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.
I remember reading about umami in high school..and that was a long time ago
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