The fifth element

01 December 2005
The fifth element

I only recently discovered that all my favourite foods - and drinks - share the same basic taste: chips cooked in goose fat, grated Parmesan-drenched spaghetti with tomato sauce, truffles, foie gras, pata negra, chicken soup and vintage Champagne all include a big dose of umami.

For those of you who haven't come across the word, it's the fifth taste, after sweet, sour, salt and bitter. Western wisdom dictates that there are only four basic tastes, but talk to anyone from Japan and they'll tell you about a fifth taste, called umami, or xian, as it's known in China. Asian cuisine is based on umami-rich ingredients.

In fact, awareness of umami has been filtering through to the mainstream for a few years now. Top chefs such as Heston Blumenthal at the Fat Duck and Gary Danko in San Francisco have got it sussed, working with it to enhance, balance and refine their dishes. And then there are those chefs who have been working with it since year dot but just didn't know the chemical explanation.

Why all the fuss? Well, say the umami-enlightened, the understanding of food isn't complete without it. "You've got to know what's happening inside your mouth. It's like telling you all about salt, sweet and bitter and forgetting the acid," says Blumenthal, who was invited to speak on the subject at an umami workshop in its spiritual home, Kyoto.

Greeks and romans So the Japanese invented it then? Not exactly. The Chinese have been talking about it for more than 1,200 years. In 500BC Greeks and Romans put garum (a pickled, umami-rich fish sauce) in everything. And in his book The Physiology of Taste, published in 1825, Brillat-Savarin makes reference to "osmosone", generally considered a forerunner to the concept of umami.

But it wasn't isolated as a specific taste until 1908, when a Japanese scientist, Kikunae Ikeda, discovered that the active ingredient in Japan's favourite broth, dashi - the bit that made him go yum - was glutamic acid. He called it umami, which is derived from the Japanese word for delicious. His discovery prompted the first commercial production of monosodium glutamate (MSG).

OK, so there's been a lot of controversy over MSG in recent years, most of it laid at the door of Chinese restaurants, whose liberal use of MSG has been blamed for everything from dehydration to palpitations. But there's no scientific proof of its negative effects. In fact, Oxford University professor Edmund Rolls, who has done extensive research on umami, told the New Frontiers of Taste event at the Cheltenham Science Festival this summer that he believes MSG could actually have health benefits, enabling cooks to reduce the amount of salt used.

Increase umami And no, I'm not suggesting that you start sprinkling MSG on everything to up those umami levels; overuse can flatten the other flavours in a dish. There are other ways to increase umami or, if you prefer, enhance flavour.

Umami is found naturally in many foods, both animal and vegetable. It is a combination of proteins, amino acids and nucleotides, which include not only glutamates, but also inosinates and guanylates. When the proteins break down through cooking, fermenting, ageing or ripening, the umami flavours intensify. Get the combinations right - say, glutamates hooked up with inosinates - and the umami character is magnified further.

Blumenthal, for example, adds Parmesan to his marinated squid - the combination of seafood rich in nucleotides with Parmesan rich in glutamate balances the umami in the squid. And what did you think was the reasoning behind his sardine on toast sorbet and ballotine of mackerel? He extracts the enzymes from tuna belly, which act as a glue to bind the mackerel together. He then sets the whole thing off with an umami-rich dashi vinaigrette. Pair it with a junmai ginjo sake from Takasago and you've got the ultimate umami hit, says Blumenthal. "When I first tasted this combination it made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up - and I wanted to know why," he says.

Now it's my turn. I admit I have struggled to pin down this mysterious fifth taste, but after a bit of basic tuition from Blumenthal - he sent me out shopping for seaweed - I think I've just about got it.

"The best thing is to taste umami in its purest form. This is how I teach all my chefs," advises Blumenthal, who even encourages a quick lick of MSG to illustrate his point. Or, failing that, boil a sea snail, which provided him with one of his ultimate umami hits. "I was in France on my annual family holiday tucking into a plate of seafood when I grabbed this big old beast - it was the pure umami."

I nibble on a large, leathery sheet of kombu, which smells like a day at the beach. It's savoury, meaty, not quite salty, and has a pleasing, toe-curling depth of flavour.

The tongue and taste
There are about 10,000 taste-buds on the tongue. Before umami was identified at the beginning of the 20th century, it used to be thought that these broke down in to four basic categories, each with a specific location. Sweet sensors on the tongue's tip, salt ones on either side at the front, sour sensors on either side at the rear, and bitter bang central at the back of the tongue. When umami came into the equation these assumptions were blown apart, and scientists now believe that taste sensors are not so easily delineated and, indeed, that the distribution of taste-buds on each person's tongue is unique.
BOXHEAD: The chef perspective

Ichiro Kubota Umu, London
Ultimate umami dish: suppon jitate ("in the manner of soft-shell turtle") - Kubota uses sea bass instead of the traditional turtle. It's a classic Kyoto soup with a stock made of bonito flakes, seaweed and sake, with sea bass, grilled Japanese leeks, chopped chives and grilled shiitake mushrooms.

"Contrary to Western perception, umami is not difficult to understand. Every ingredient has a certain level of umami in it - and every chef is creating umami in its pure form every time they make a stock. For Japanese people, umami is more of a spiritual thing. We don't really talk about it. It's normal, it's with us every day. Unless, of course, a dish is packed with umami, then we say this dish has koku, which means concentrated umami. Koku is usually a positive thing, though you can overdo umami, just as you can over-salt dishes. We use the term to describe someone with a strong personality, though in that sense this could be negative or positive. Yes, I think it's important for all chefs to understand umami, but there can be too much focus on it. You don't want to labour it, otherwise you will lose the natural umami already present in the dish."

Mark Edwards Executive chef, Nobu, London
Ultimate umami dish: miso soup

"I first came across the term umami nine years ago - that's when the penny dropped. It was the miso soup, which is your classic umami flavour, and a perfect example. Miso soup is the first thing my chefs learn to make here. It sounds simple, but making it right can take a few months to master. It's all about flavour and balance - it has to have real depth. To do that you must use exactly the right amount of bonito flakes, etcetera. Yes, I think umami is definitely something Western chefs need to know more about, but I think it's difficult to teach. It's like telling someone how much salt they should use."

Jerome Tauvron L'Etranger, London
Ultimate umami hit: black cod - he marinates the fish for a few days in miso, sugar, mirin and sake, then grills it until it caramelises

"I first came across umami when I worked in Tokyo 10 years ago setting up a restaurant for a friend. It's part of their way of life, and I wanted to know more. I still don't know quite how to describe it - it's so subtle - but it makes a dish great. About 90% of what I cook has a high level of umami in it. It already plays an unconscious part in the European kitchen, though when I start talking about it to chefs here they think I'm mad. I think French chefs, in particular, are really stubborn about it, but it's important to be aware of it."

For more information visit the Umami Information Centre at www.umamiinfo.com

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