Umami was only identified as a taste in 1990, but its history goes back millennia. So what is the secret of savouriness, and how should you use it?
Umami is the key to cooking, and it’s fundamental to making food taste good.Humans taste only five things – salt, sweet, sour, bitter and umami.
Try blocking your sense of smell by pinching your nose, and tasting those things again. The coriander and cinnamon wouldn’t taste of much at all, and the jellybeans would taste sweet, though you wouldn’t be able to tell which of the nine flavours you were eating.Our salt taste tells us that our food contains salts, necessary for fluid regulation. Sourness can help us detect necessary vitamins .
But even before we understood the science of umami, it was already at work in the cuisines of the world. Heating food kills harmful bacteria. Fermenting allows beneficial bacteria to crowd out harmful ones. The processes of cooking often make food easier to digest, and as such there is an evolutionary basis for selection for umami taste.When I am learning a new cuisine, I look for the techniques, preparations, or raw ingredients that provide the necessary umami to make food taste good.
Ingredients like meat, seafood and dairy products are high in umami, particularly when fermented and aged like cheese.
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