Since ancient times, people have recognized four basic tastes. One is sour, like a lemon. Another is salty, like potato chips. The third is sweet, like sugar. The fourth taste is bitter, like coffee or unsweetened chocolate.
It wasn’t until the late 1800s in Paris that a famous chef, Auguste Escoffier, made a new discovery about taste. First, he fried beef in a pan at a very high heat until it was brown. Then he added a liquid and scraped the browned meat from the bottom of the pan. The taste of the browned meat stock wasn’t sweet, salty, bitter, or sour. Escoffier was a chef, not a scientist, but he was sure he had found a fifth taste. He used his discovery to create some of his famous sauces.
About 20 years later in Japan, Kikunae Ikeda was eating a bowl of soup. As he ate, he tried to decide what made the soup so delicious. His wife told him how she made it. The basic ingredient was dashi, a stock made with kelp, or dried seaweed. Suddenly, it occurred to him, too: there weren’t four tastes. There was a fifth taste, and this was it the deep, full taste in the stock!
Ikeda was a food chemist. He decided to use his knowledge and skills as chemist. He wanted to know exactly what this fifth taste was. He went to work in his laboratory and found the answer glutamate. Glutamate is an amino acid that is produced when living things begin to die. For example, the production of glutamate happens when cheese ages or meat cooks. Its taste is very different from the other four taste. Ikeda decided to call the taste umami. This comes from a Japanese word that means “delicious.”
Since ancient times, people have recognized four basic tastes. One is sour, like a lemon. Another is salty, like potato chips. The third is sweet, like sugar. The fourth taste is bitter, like coffee or unsweetened chocolate. It wasn’t until the late 1800s in Paris that a famous chef, Auguste Escoffier, made a new discovery about taste. First, he fried beef in a pan at a very high heat until it was brown. Then he added a liquid and scraped the browned meat from the bottom of the pan. The taste of the browned meat stock wasn’t sweet, salty, bitter, or sour. Escoffier was a chef, not a scientist, but he was sure he had found a fifth taste. He used his discovery to create some of his famous sauces. About 20 years later in Japan, Kikunae Ikeda was eating a bowl of soup. As he ate, he tried to decide what made the soup so delicious. His wife told him how she made it. The basic ingredient was dashi, a stock made with kelp, or dried seaweed. Suddenly, it occurred to him, too: there weren’t four tastes. There was a fifth taste, and this was it the deep, full taste in the stock! Ikeda was a food chemist. He decided to use his knowledge and skills as chemist. He wanted to know exactly what this fifth taste was. He went to work in his laboratory and found the answer glutamate. Glutamate is an amino acid that is produced when living things begin to die. For example, the production of glutamate happens when cheese ages or meat cooks. Its taste is very different from the other four taste. Ikeda decided to call the taste umami. This comes from a Japanese word that means “delicious.”
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