Umami

Umami is the savory, mouth-filling taste of foods such as aged cheese, cured meat, ripe tomatoes, mushrooms, soy sauce and long-cooked broth. It is one of the five basic tastes, with sweet, sour, salty and bitter. The word is Japanese and is often translated as "pleasant savory taste". Umami makes food taste rich and complete.

Why it works

The tongue has receptors for glutamate, an amino acid, and for two related compounds, inosinate and guanylate. Glutamate is common in aged, fermented, dried and ripe foods, because aging and fermenting break proteins into free amino acids. Inosinate is common in meat and fish, and guanylate in dried mushrooms. Put glutamate together with one of the other two and the savory taste is much stronger than either alone. That is why Japanese dashi pairs kombu with bonito flakes, and why cheese on a meat sauce works so well.

How to use it

Add an umami ingredient when a dish tastes thin or flat:

• Glutamate-rich: Parmesan, ripe and dried tomatoes, tomato paste, soy sauce, miso, kombu, nutritional yeast, MSG.
• Inosinate-rich: anchovies, bonito flakes, cured ham, meat broth.
• Guanylate-rich: dried shiitake and porcini mushrooms.

A few easy uses: stir a teaspoon of miso or soy sauce into a stew; melt anchovies into a pasta sauce; brown tomato paste with the onions; add a Parmesan rind to a soup while it simmers; or finish a vegetable soup with a splash of fish sauce.

Common mistakes

• Adding too much at once. Many umami ingredients are also salty, so cut back on salt.
• Adding dried mushrooms or kombu without soaking or simmering them, so the flavor does not come out.
• Using umami ingredients to fix a dish that is really missing salt or acid. Taste and adjust those first.

Where it comes from

The Japanese chemist Kikunae Ikeda named umami in 1908 after finding glutamate in kombu broth. Receptors for it on the tongue were identified about a century later, and it is now widely accepted as a basic taste.