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 stock1 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!