Being a taste panelist is hard work. Not only does the job require a well-trained sense of smell and taste, it also means being able to accurately describe the collective experience of flavor perception.

One group particularly suited to this task, food editors, put their senses to work during an IFIC-sponsored workshop "Savor the Flavor in Food," during the International Food Media Conference in Orlando.

Research in taste physiology has shown that there are many more tastes beyond the classic four of sweet, sour, salty and bitter, according to Susan Schiffman, Ph.D., professor of medical psychology and director of the weight loss clinic at Duke University Medical Center.

One taste sensation now gaining recognition among Western cultures is known as "UMAMI." The UMAMI taste is conveyed by several substances naturally occurring in foods, including glutamate.

Food media conferees were challenged to identify the UMAMI taste provided by glutamate in one of three samples of chicken stock. The samples were all prepared from the same basic recipe using chicken parts and vegetables, varying only in the presence or absence of salt and monosodium glutamate (MSG). The editors ere not informed which samples contained which seasonings.

When asked to identify the broth that conveyed the UMAMI taste, 60 percent of the editors correctly identified the stock containing MSG.

In terms of taste preferences, however, 75 percent of the editors indicated they preferred the broth with the UMAMI flavor contributed by glutamate. They described the taste as "rich," "well-rounded," "savory," "full-bodied," "brothy," and "more chicken-like."

Although UMAMI was first identified by Oriental cooks 1200 years ago, it wasn't until the turn of this century that scientists isolated glutamate and other substances which convey this distinctive flavor. Sensory research shows that glutamate does not enhance any of the four classic tastes, nor can the UMAMI taste be formed by any combination of the classic four.

Glutamate is an amino acid that is found throughout the human body. It's also naturally present in protein-rich foods such as cheese, meat, fish and human milk. When present in its "free" form in foods -- not bound together with other amino acids in protein-glutamate exerts its UMAMI-flavor effect.

MSG added to foods provides a similar flavoring function as the "free" glutamate that occurs naturally in foods. It is often used to flavor meats, poultry, seafood, soups, stews, sauces and gravies.

Thirty-eight percent of the editors mistakenly identified the salt-only chicken stock as the one containing MSG. Although many people have the misperception that MSG makes food taste saltier, MSG contains only one-third the amount of sodium as table salt. MSG can be used in many foods to reduce the total amount of sodium by 20 to 40 percent, while maintaining an acceptable flavor.

MSG is classified by the Food and Drug Administration as a Generally Recognized as Safe (GRAS) substance. All foods with added MSG must list the ingredient on the label as monosodium glutamate.

In conducting clinical research on persons with taste and smell impairments, Schiffman also has found that many consumers mistakenly believe MSG is a preservative or meat tenderizer.

"Having experienced the UMAMI taste sensation first-hand, hopefully food editors can help educate consumers about MSG's unique and flavorful contribution to foods," she said.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, Professor Kikunae Ikeda of Tokyo Imperial University was thinking about the taste of food: "There is a taste which is common to asparagus, tomatoes, cheese and meat but which is not one of the four well-known tastes of sweet, sour, bitter and salty."

It was in 1907 that Professor Ikeda started his experiments to identify what the source of this distinctive taste was. He knew that it was present in the "broth" made from kombu (a type of seaweed) found in traditional Japanese cuisine. Starting with a tremendous quantity of kombu broth, he succeeded in extracting crystals of glutamic acid (or glutamate). Glutamate is an amino acid, and is a building block of protein. Professor Ikeda found that glutamate had a distinctive taste, different from sweet, sour, bitter and salty, and he named it "umami". 100 grams of dried kombu contain about 1 gram of glutamate.

A New Product

Professor Ikeda decided to make a seasoning using his newly-isolated glutamate. To be used as seasoning, glutamate had to have some of the same physical characteristics which are found, for example, in sugar and salt: it had to be easily soluble in water but neither absorb humidity nor solidify. Professor Ikeda found that monosodium glutamate had good storage properties and a strong umami or savoury taste. It turned out to be an ideal seasoning. Because monosodium glutamate has no smell or specific texture of its own, it can be used in many different dishes where it naturally enhances the original flavor of the food.

Posted: Thursday, July 31, 2003

By Sam Gugino

Nine years ago, when Jonathan Pratt was dating Suzie Low, now his wife, she cooked pork adobo for him. He was initially repelled by the copious amount of fish sauce in Low's version of this Filipino dish. But in the interests of romance, he plowed ahead. By the end of the evening, he had consumed three portions.

Ironically, it was the fish sauce that hooked Pratt, though he didn't know it at the time. What was it in the fish sauce that made that pork adobo so wonderful? Umami. Ingredients such as fish sauce, soy sauce, Parmigiano-Reggiano and dried shiitake mushrooms enhance the taste of food by increasing its umami level. Today, as co-owner of the Umami Café in Croton-on-Hudson, N.Y., Pratt demonstrates this every evening.

We've always been told that there are four basic tastes: salty, sweet, bitter and sour. However, there is a fifth taste, umami (pronounced oo-MOM-ee). It sounds more exotic and mysterious than the other four, and in a way, it is. Umami has been variously described as tasty, meaty, savory or just plain "delicious."

Tim Hanni, a Master of Wine and president of WineQuest, a wine consulting company in the Napa Valley, has been an umami disciple since he gave a seminar to a group of Japanese sommeliers 12 years ago. "One of the sommeliers asked 'How do you refer to the amino acid taste in wine, you know, umami?'" Hanni said. "I had no idea what he was talking about. But afterward I did some research and found 100 papers on the subject." In fact, "the Chinese have been talking about it for 1,200 years," writes Wine Spectator editor at large Harvey Steiman in his book Essentials of Wine. An early western reference can be found in Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin's Physiology of Taste (first published in Paris in 1825), which refers to a "savory taste" in certain foods.

Umami was isolated by Japanese scientist Kikunae Ikeda in 1907. Ikeda wondered if the seaweed that gave flavor to a common Japanese broth could do the same for other foods. He discovered that the active ingredient in the seaweed was glutamic acid. Glutamic acid, or glutamate, had a taste that was distinctive from sweet, sour, bitter and salty. Ikeda named it "umami" (from the Japanese words umai or "delicious" and mi or "essence"). Ikeda then created monosodium glutamate (MSG), which could provide umami as a seasoning.

"Put some MSG on your tongue. At first it doesn't taste so good. But then 10 seconds later, it's a big taste, more like a feel. I call it savory," says Joe Brand, associate director of the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia. Brand says he thinks it is the sodium that activates glutamate in MSG to give the umami effect.

Umami is also found in nucleotides, the basic structural units of DNA, among other things. When foods that contain glutamates are combined with foods that have nucleotides, the umami effect increases exponentially, says Hanni.

Glutamate rich foods include seaweed, cheeses (especially Parmigiano-Reggiano), soy sauce, fish sauce, green tea, sardines, fresh tomato juice, peas and fermented beans. Good sources of nucleotides are dried shiitake, matsutake and enokitake mushrooms as well as fresh shiitake mushrooms, bonito flakes, bonito, mackerel, sea bream, sardines, tuna and aged beef.

While many foods have natural amounts of umami, their umami levels can increase when they undergo various transformations. The most elemental of these is the ripening of fruits and vegetables. For example, a ripe tomato has 10 times the glutamate of an unripe tomato. Drying, curing, aging and fermentation all increase the umami level. Dried shiitake mushrooms and dried sardines have considerably more umami than their fresh counterparts. Why does aged beef have more flavor than unaged beef? It has more umami. Fermentation gives soy sauce, Asian fish sauces and many other condiments such as hot sauces, Worcestershire sauce, Vegemite and Bovril lots of umami.

Fermentation also applies to beverages such as beer and wine. Hanni says big, rich red wines, especially those with high ripeness levels such as Australian Shirazes, and whites that have extended lees contact such as "big, fat, ripe, creamy Chardonnays and round, delicious Champagnes" tend to have the most umami.

What many of these methods have in common is that they break down foods into smaller units of flavor, which are easier to detect. These smaller units, says Shirley Corriher, a food scientist and the author of CookWise, The Hows and Whys of Successful Cooking (William Morrow) "make taste receptors go 'ding ding' in our brain and say 'this is good.'"

At the Umami Café, which opened in January 2002, Pratt calls his blend of Asian, Hawaiian, European and Latin flavors "umami-fusion." I call it one of the most flavorful menus I've ever sampled. "I'm always trying to increase the amount of umami in a dish," Pratt says. "For example, when I brown lamb shanks, I use duck fat instead of oil because duck fat is high in umami."

Duck is ubiquitous on the menu, from Peking duck quesadillas (which get a shot in the arm from umami-rich hoisin sauce) to duck-amaki, Moulard duck breast rolls with a sweet soy glaze. The superlative coconut lime soup is a caldron of umami, with peas, fish sauce and shiitake mushrooms.

Sometimes Pratt will take a decidedly un-umami dish such as macaroni and cheese and "pump it up" with umami ingredients, in this case, truffle oil, truffle butter, soy sauce and Parmigiano-Reggiano. The result is a mac and cheese so addictive that my wife and I fought over the last few mouthfuls.

You can do your own umami layering at home. Cooking increases umami by breaking down food into smaller components. For example, a long, slow-simmering stew generally has a higher level of umami (all other factors being equal) than a quick sauté. Oven roasting or oven drying not-ready-for-prime-time tomatoes will punch up the umami by concentrating the flavor. A pinch of sugar in tomato sauce mimics the ripening process and thus boosts umami as well.

Tomato sauces are a good medium for umami experimentation because their existing umami can easily be enhanced. For instance, adding vodka to a tomato sauce increases flavor, because even though vodka itself has no taste, the alcohol acts as a solvent, releasing the umami in tomatoes. And because vodka is higher in alcohol than table wine, it does a more effective job than wine.

Sometimes umami boosters can come from unlikely sources. Even though soy sauce and tomato sauce seem like improbable partners, a small amount of soy sauce increases the umami in tomato sauce. A few minced anchovies do the same thing. (Oily fish are typically high in umami. Salt curing increases the effect.) Try them in braised dishes, too, such as osso buco.

Aside from having fruit-forward wines, Pratt hasn't played much with building umami by matching wines with food. An Alsatian Pinot Blanc worked nicely with the lighter fare I sampled. A California Pinot Noir did the trick with the heavier stuff. (Both are food-friendly wines.) In Essentials of Wine, Steiman notes that foods high in umami "send any bitterness in wine off the charts." That's why, Steiman writes, "Burgundians choose their older wines for braised beef and chicken. The reduced tannin in older wines doesn't clash with umami."

Aside from aggravating tannic wines, umami would seem to have no downside. But for some folks, the mere mention of MSG sends off alarm bells because they believe it causes headaches and other symptoms such as sweating and numbness or burning in the mouth. However, Corriher, Hanni and Brand all say that the negativity surrounding MSG is vastly overstated. "The students I survey (at nearby University of Pennsylvania School of Dental Medicine) who say they suffer from 'Chinese restaurant syndrome' also eat Parmesan cheese and tomatoes," Brand says "And restaurants that say 'No MSG' also have dishes loaded with soy sauce."

One area where umami seems to have little effect, positive or negative, is dessert. "Even chocolate doesn't have umami," Pratt says.

A few years back, umami was finally recognised as the fifth taste, after salty, sour, sweet and bitter. But, even so, how many of us can say what it really tastes like?

Heston Blumenthal
Saturday July 13, 2002
The Guardian

Umami is a word that sounds as if it would be more at home in a Reeves and Mortimer sketch than in a kitchen. But it's not some comedy codeword - it's the fifth taste. Is this all sounding cryptic enough for you?

We've long been told, in the western world at least, that there are four basic tastes (taste being what we perceive in the mouth and on the tongue, as opposed to flavour, which is registered in our olfactory bulb, behind the bridge of the nose): salty, sweet, bitter and sour. But, for a while now, there has been widespread acceptance of a fifth taste - namely, umami.

In 1825, the French gastronome Brillat-Savarin, in his book The Physiology Of Taste, used the word "osmosone" to describe the "meaty" taste. Professor Edmund Rolls, one of the world's leading experts on the psychology of flavour, kindly gave me some background information on the subject. The term umami was first coined by the scientist Kikunae Ikeda of the Tokyo Imperial University way back in 1908. There is still no direct translation for it in English, but umami is best described as savoury, meaty and broth-like.

In the west, for years we've used fat to add richness and fullness to the food we cook. In the far east, however - and in Japan in particular - that added richness has long been provided by foods with a high umami content, most notably kelp and konbu, the dried seaweed that is used to make that versatile and essential Japanese broth, dashi. This broth really does lend a full-ness of flavour and a meaty tone - and with none of the fattiness that comes from using butter or cream, either.

Ikeda looked at the constituents of konbu, and found that the umami character was created by the presence of glutamates. It has since been found that other substances also carry these properties, notably inosinate and nucleotides. When foods containing these were combined in the right proportions, it was found that the umami character was magnified quite substantially.

Some amazing developments have taken place in recent years on the way in which we perceive flavour. Notably, that we have more than 300 receptor genes that, between them, account for every possible flavour known to man. This is something so potentially revolutionary that I will be returning to it in subsequent articles, but for now it will suffice to tell you that, among those receptors, one has been isolated that is responsible for detecting the umami taste.

I realise that I'm on the verge of getting a bit over-technical here, and that many of you may still be wondering what on earth the umami taste actually is. Well, most of us will have come across it in Chinese cooking - or at least the approximation of it that is available on any British high street these days. The addition of monosodium glutamate is what gives this Chinese food its unique flavour (and is, unfortunately, also responsible for those unpleasant side effects, such as headaches and dehydration, that led to the creation of the phrase "Chinese restaurant syndrome").

MSG looks like salt, and is manufactured from a range of sources, notably wheat gluten. It acts as a flavour enhancer, making the mouth more receptive to any meaty flavours in the food. However, there are also several foods that are high in naturally occurring MSG, and konbu has one of the highest levels. Many big supermarkets now sell it, so if you really want to know what the taste of umami actually is, eat, or rather chew on, a big piece of the stuff. Do so and you'll notice a really meaty/salty feeling in the mouth that is most certainly different from any of the other tastes.

Other foodstuffs with a high umami content include Parmesan, shiitake mushrooms, soya sauce (the naturally fermented variety) and all the fermented oriental fish sauce products.

The first food in that list raises one pretty contentious issue that I'd like to deal with - namely, the rule in Italian cuisine that Parmesan should never be served with seafood, particularly when pasta or rice are involved. Well, I, for one, have always felt this "rule" to be without foundation, and now recent studies - notably those of Shizuko Yamaguchi - have confirmed that, by showing that foods that are high in nucleotides have a synergy with foods high in natural MSG. As a matter of fact, it has been found that, when combined in the right proportions, the taste intensity can be magnified by up to five times.

All of which got me thinking, and resulted in the first of this week's recipes. Both squid and scallop are naturally high in nucleotides, and Parmesan contains one of the highest levels of naturally occurring MSG. So, combined with squid, say, it works wonderfully, for much the same reason as it goes so well with tomatoes. The only answer, really, is to try it for yourself.

While few of us can define it, we've all had the "umami" experience. Umami is a taste sensation found in some foods. The Japanese, who define umami as "deliciousness," have long recognized it as a taste distinct from sweet, salty, bitter and sour--the fifth taste. It has been further described as imparting a "robust," savory" and at times "meaty" flavor to dishes.

The umami sensation is difficult for most of us to get our taste buds around, perhaps because it is a multidimensional, subtle taste that blends so well with others. Until recently, Westerners have not recognized umami as a specific flavor, nor have we had the language to describe it.

What is it exactly that makes umami happen? Umami is both a basic taste and a flavor enhancer produced by the presence of a specific chemical compound--free glutamate. First isolated in Japan in 1908, glutamate is a form of glutamic acid, one of the most abundant amino acids in food. Glutamate is to umami what sodium chloride (table salt) is to saltiness. Recently, scientists have discovered tongue receptors that seem to react only to glutamates, which supports the case for making umami the fifth taste.

Glutamate is abundant in all mushrooms placing them high on the umami scale. The resulting "meaty" flavor offered by mushrooms, along with their distinctive texture, explains why they so successfully stand in for meat in vegetarian dishes. Other glutamate-rich foods include tomatoes, Parmesan cheese, soy sauce, bonito flakes and kelp.

The story of umami doesn't end with glutamate. A group of compounds called ribonucleotides have been found to work synergistically with glutamate to heighten the "umami-ness" of foods. If you've noticed that mushrooms are the perfect partners for many kinds of meat, poultry and fish, it's because the free glutamate in mushrooms' complements certain ribonucleotides naturally occurring in protein foods. Scientists hypothesize that the ribonucleotides prime the glutamate receptor sites on the tongue to provide a more intense umami taste sensation.

Right now, the very latest umami news is that some mushrooms, especially shiitake, naturally contain both free glutamate and the ribonucleotide guanylate, in significant amounts, further amplifying the "meaty" umami sensation.

Scientists Find Fifth Taste Receptor

W A S H I N G T O N, Jan. 24, 2000 -Researchers said today they had identified the molecule in the tongue that helps people taste umami, the "fifth taste" also known as monosodium glutamate (MSG) that gives many Asian foods their punch.

The four major tastes in food are usually identified as sweet, salty, sour and bitter, but many experts have argued that the umami taste is not only unique but is equally important.

Nirupa Chaudhari and colleagues at the University of Miami School of Medicine knew that the body is extremely sensitive to glutamate, which is found in many protein-containing foods, including meat, seafood and aged cheese.

Glutamate is also used as a neurotransmitter, or message-carrying chemical, in the brain. Neurons have a variety of receptors designed to detect its presence.

Such receptors, which are a kind of chemical doorway, should theoretically be used by cells on the tongue to detect glutamate in food. In fact, one of them, a protein called mGluR4, is found in taste buds.

But mGluR4 is so sensitive to glutamate that if any umami taste is present in a food at all, it should overwhelm all other tastes. Also, molecules that block the protein do not block the ability to taste umami.

Writing in the journal Nature Neuroscience, Chaudhari and colleagues said they had figured out why this does not happen.

Using taste buds from young rats, which seem to taste glutamate in the same way people do, they found a truncated version of mGluR4. This chopped-off form of the protein can detect umami, but is not as sensitive to it as brain cells are.

"The similarity of its properties to MSG taste suggests that this receptor is a taste receptor for glutamate," they wrote in their report. Umami was first identified as a distinct taste in 1908 by Kikunae Ikeda of the Tokyo Imperial University, who was struck by the distinctive flavor of seaweed broth. He isolated and identified the glutamate molecule.

The Japanese know all about umami. Now Western chefs are finally getting excited about the 'fifth taste'

By CHRIS JOHNS
Special to The Globe and Mail
Saturday, September 20, 2003 - Page L11

Place a small, crumbly morsel of aged Parmigiano Reggiano on the tip of your tongue and let it melt slowly. Soon your taste buds are overwhelmed with pleasure.

What you are experiencing is umami (pronounced oo-mam-ee), or the fifth taste -- after salty, sweet, sour and bitter. And when it comes to food, umami is the ultimate in satisfaction.

Although it has been around as long as the concept of appetite, umami is suddenly on the tip of every gourmand's tongue. As chef Chris McDonald of Toronto's Avalon restaurant says, "I think every good chef's instinctive aim is to achieve [umami] in their cooking."

Yes, umami is the new salt.

Umami occurs everywhere in the North American diet. Foods like Parmesan cheese, sun-dried tomatoes and tomato paste, anchovies, soy sauce and cured meats all embody umami. The classic Caesar salad is made irresistible by the concentrated umami contained in a dressing of anchovies, eggs and Worcestershire sauce. Tossed with slightly bitter romaine lettuce and topped with a few shreds of Parmesan cheese, it is a veritable avalanche of umami.

Toronto chef Susur Lee says that exploiting food's umami qualities is "a good way to combine new flavours in a natural way." Lee recently created a special umami dinner: cured venison and crab with mussel-horseradish vinaigrette and summer truffle.In her new cookbook, Taste: A New Way to Cook, British chef and food writer Sybil Kapoor offers ways to maximize umami. For instance, in a recipe for buckwheat noodles with soy-honey dressing, she writes: "A careful juxtaposition of umami soy sauce with umami nori enhances the sweetness in the noodles, tofu and onions." She combines grilled endive, arugula and figs with Parma ham so that "the salty umami ham and bitter arugula enhance the sweetness in the bitter endive."

The easiest way to add umami to food is to shake on a little MSG (monosodium glutamate). In 1907, professor Kikunae Ikeda of the University of Tokyo was enjoying a bowl of dashi with tofu when it occurred to him that dishes flavoured with kombu -- a form of giant kelp used to flavour broths -- had a unique and delicious flavour and the ability, like salt, to enhance and harmonize other flavours.

He named this flavour umami, from the Japanese umai or "delicious" and mi, "essence." In his effort to isolate umami, Prof. Ikeda began experimenting with various glutamate compounds and was eventually able to bottle a substance that makes food taste better.

MSG has got a bad rap in recent years, blamed for an array of symptoms from headaches to stomach trouble. In fact, there is little scientific evidence for the claim; and parmesan cheese and tomato paste are also high in the substance.

MSG works to produce the umami flavour because its chemical structure is similar to that which is produced naturally when foods age, ferment, ripen or are cooked. In each of these processes, proteins break down and release more free glutamates and, therefore, more umami taste. For this reason, dried shiitake, matsutake and porcini mushrooms have more umami than their fresh counterparts.

Fermentation gives soy sauce, fish sauce, Worcestershire sauce, hot sauces, Vegemite and Bovril lots of umami. And people prefer aged beef to fresh because the former contains more umami.

Certainly it is more than a passing fad. Scientists speculate that our cravings for certain tastes help ensure that we remain healthy. A sweet tooth, for example, is our body's way of reminding us that we need to eat enough high-calorie, carbohydrate-rich foods. A desire for salt ensures that we get enough sodium and minerals. We are sensitive to sour and bitter flavours because in nature many foods that are too acidic or alkali are dangerous.

We crave umami flavours -- think of it as a "protein tooth" -- because it satisfies our bodies' need for essential amino acids. According to Russell Keast, a research associate at the Monell Chemical Senses Centre in Philadelphia: "Umami is a flavour enhancer because it has a role in suppressing bitterness."

The next time you are enjoying a few fries dipped in ketchup or topping off a fine pasta puttanesca with grated cheese, think about those tasty little glutamates that make your meal so delicious. You may have just experienced a perfect umami moment.