Umami: The Fifth Taste and How to Cook With It

For most of Western culinary history, taste was understood as four things: sweet, sour, salty and bitter. Then in 1908, a Japanese chemist named Kikunae Ikeda was eating a bowl of dashi — the clear Japanese stock made from kombu seaweed and dried bonito flakes — and noticed something. The stock had a distinct savouriness that couldn't be explained by saltiness alone. It was rich, mouth-coating and persistent. He isolated the compound responsible: glutamate, specifically L-glutamate, a naturally occurring amino acid. He named the taste it produced umami — from the Japanese umai (delicious) and mi (taste).

Ikeda went on to develop monosodium glutamate (MSG) as a flavour enhancer, which became one of the most used and most misunderstood food additives in history. The association of MSG with the so-called 'Chinese restaurant syndrome' has been thoroughly debunked — multiple double-blind studies have found no evidence that MSG causes any symptoms in the vast majority of people, and the FDA classifies it as generally safe. Meanwhile, glutamate occurs naturally at high concentrations in parmesan cheese, ripe tomatoes, anchovies, soy sauce, mushrooms, marmite and cured meats — foods that have been central to great cooking for centuries.

Umami works differently from the other four tastes. While sweetness and saltiness are relatively simple sensory experiences, umami is more complex — it enhances and rounds other flavours, adds a sense of depth and persistence, and creates what Japanese cooks call kokumi (richness or body). A dish with well-developed umami doesn't just taste savoury — it tastes more of itself. The other flavours are amplified and integrated rather than competing separately.

The practical cooking implications are significant. Umami compounds are particularly concentrated in aged, fermented, dried and slow-cooked foods. Parmesan aged for 24 months has far more glutamate than young cheese. Anchovies that have been salt-cured for a year are umami bombs. A tomato paste cooked down until it darkens has more umami than fresh tomatoes. Fish sauce, made from fermented anchovies, is perhaps the most concentrated source of umami in any cuisine.

Synergy is the most powerful umami concept for cooks: certain combinations of umami compounds produce dramatically more savouriness together than the sum of their parts. Glutamate (in tomatoes, parmesan, mushrooms) combined with inosinate (in meat and fish) produces a synergistic effect that multiplies the perceived umami five to eight times. This is why bolognese tastes richer than minced beef alone, why parmesan on pasta is transformative, and why the Japanese combination of kombu (glutamate) and bonito (inosinate) in dashi produces such an extraordinarily savoury stock from just two ingredients.

To cook with more umami: fry your tomato paste in oil before adding liquid — this concentrates and deepens its glutamate content. Add a parmesan rind to soups and stews. Use a small amount of fish sauce or soy sauce in non-Asian dishes as a background note rather than a primary flavour. Cook dried mushrooms into stocks or sauces. Reduce and caramelise onions — both processes increase glutamate. None of these additions need to be identifiable in the finished dish. They work in the background, adding the depth and persistence that makes food taste more satisfying.