Umami – The Science, Ingredients & Cooking with the ‘Fifth Taste’
As anyone who has read my former columns must have ascertained by now I believe food and wine create an essential synergy when enjoyed together. The perfect example was a couple of nights ago as I sat in front of a roaring fire warming a bottle of Washington State Cabernet that was resting in my rather cool cellar in the back room of my house. Tasted on its own it showed those ever so typical herbaceous bell pepper flavors, and was a little lean, which masked all of the lovely currant fruit that was there. When tasted with some leftover prime rib roast, which had been sweated down in a pan with onions, peppers, garlic, all cooked in lamb fat, which was then broiled in the over in a skillet with mozzarella (essentially a Philly steak sans bread), it transformed the wine into something rich and flavorful, and those annoying over-whelming bell peppers flavors completely dissipated and rather then being lean, the wine was rich and flavorful. The sum of the dish (the food and the wine) was so much greater than the individual components.
When I get the chance to further kick up the taste-bud explosion in my mouth, with super flavorful food, and great wine, well I’m sure you agree with me, you’ve got to be all over that! And this is where umami comes into play…
For years I have been fascinated with the concept of umami, the so-called fifth taste. Calling it a new taste is such a misnomer as it’s an ancient taste – it was first espoused in Roman cookbooks from the Second Century A.D! They just didn’t know what it was. Growing up in England my very favorite spread for a toast was something called Marmite. This delicious yeast extract is one of the most unique flavors in the culinary world. Although many people detest (my sister being the most forthright) this meaty and rich spread, Marmite turns out to be a rich source of what we now know as umami. So for years, much like my fascination with America (from it’s music, landscapes, history, and people), which ultimately compelled me to move here, I have been compelled and drawn to foods rich in umami – I just didn’t know it at the time.
Umami (oo-Ma-mee) has joined sweet, sour, salty and bitter as an accepted taste. But what is it? And what is its ‘story’? We’ve used it for millennia. We are happy and satisfied when we eat umami rich foods. Think of how good aged beef, raw and cooked tomatoes, mushrooms, corn, oysters, and many aged cheeses taste. It is argued that we have a biological imperative to crave it. So why are umami-laden foods so good?
Well, dear reader, please read on. After I cover the very basic science of Umami, I will list Umami rich basic ingredients, and then list ways to maximize your enjoyment of these wonderful products Nature has endowed us with.
Why is this so? Let’s start with some basics? What is taste? Because taste is in fact very different from flavor.
Part 1: The Science of Umami
An Important Lesson Learn: Taste is not Flavor!
The terms and flavor are used interchangeably in modern parlance, but there is actually a fundamental and incredibly important difference. Tastes are sensations caused by compounds called tastans. They enter your mouth, dissolve in your saliva, and encounter chemical sensing sites on your taste buds buried deep in your tongue and various parts of your mouth. For example when tastans such as fructose (fruit sugars) hit the right taste buds, our brains register what we term as sweet. When sodium chloride (table salt) hits the appropriate taste buds we register salty. Acid, such as we find in wine, vinegar and lemon, register as sour. And from alkaloids in coffee, ground black pepper, chocolate and tonic water, we taste bitter. This is taste.
The other critical component in flavor is aroma, which is what we smell in food and beverages. We acquire aroma from volatilized (vaporized) chemicals in our food called odorants. Odorants waft through our nostrils before food enters our mouths. But that’s not it. They also rise through the opening behind the soft palate on the roof of the mouth as food is chewed. This is also where the enzymes in saliva dissolve and release newly released and created odorants. Both passages lead to the olfactory receptors at the top of the nasal cavity, very close from the olfactory bulb on the brain where aroma signals are processed.
All taste buds, as far as current science has discovered, sense just five basic tastes. Olfactory receptors detect literally thousands of distinct aromas. The key here, however, is the basic tenet, and the point of this entire passage, is that TASTE + AROMA = FLAVOR. Taste happens in the mouth, aroma happens in the nasal cavity, and flavor happens when the two sensations meet in THE BRAIN.
You can even try and experiment at home if you don’t believe me. Grab a jellybean. Hold your nose. You will only taste and experience sweet, but there will not be any flavor. Release your hold on your nose. Immediately you will experience the flavor of the bean, especially if you’ve given it a good chew in your saliva. The flavor will literally explode in your mouth (and brain), be it vanilla, lime, grape, blueberry, licorice, or mint! Case closed ?
What we term as Umami is not only Glutamate
Before we get to the harder science, one misconception I need to address is that glutamate, or glutamic acids, is the only source of umami. This is not so. And while I’m on my soapbox MSG (which is essentially a commercially created glutamate flavoring so popular in Asia) is only bad for a tiny fraction of the population, so most of us can ignore the ‘No MSG’ signs we see in so many Asian restaurants. Believe me it might freak you out to know how much of any processed foods you ingest contain what is essentially an MSG derivative cleverly labeled by food manufacturers!
Glutamate is the most common and abundant amino acid in nature. Like many amino acids, glutamate has many roles in the body. Not only is glutamate the most abundant amino acid, it also the busiest, performing more functions in the body than any other amino acid. One key action is its role as neural transmitter, adding to the flow of information to our brains. Another is as a building block of proteins, which are simply chains of amino acids, sometimes hundreds of molecules long. Depending on which amino acids they are made of and how they are arranged, different proteins are suited to different functions in the body. Some become muscle tissue, others become enzymes, others go on to form brain cells. Humans require around 100,000 different proteins, each with unique characteristics and compositions.
Ironically in the food scheme of things, and our story especially, glutamates are actually non-essential amino acids. Non-essential amino acids are manufactured at will by our bodies, which means that it is not essential that we get them from our diets. Of the twenty amino acids used in our bodies for constructing proteins, they are only nine that we cannot manufacture ourselves (hence them being called essential amino acids). If we don’t include the nine essential amino acids as part of our diets we risk serious protein deficiency.
It’s also important to know that in order for glutamate to have its umami taste, it must be in its free state, i.e. not bound up as part of a protein molecule. But don’t worry, glutamate isn’t the only umami tasting substance that we eat. There are many more.
The ‘Discovery’ of Umami in 1907, it’s naming, progress of the
past century, and the biological imperatives of Umami:
A Quick Scientific Overview
So, finally, we get to the start, the meat, of the story. Umami was discovered by a man called Dr. Kikunae Ikeda, a Tokyo University professor in 1907. But to get how Dr. Ikeda pondered, experimented, and ultimately isolated the umami taste in his Tokyo University labs, we need to go back to 1866. Glutamate was discovered that year by Dr. Karl Ritthausen, a German chemist studying wheat proteins. Glutamate was so named because of the abundant amount of the protein gluten that Dr. Ritthausen found in wheat. In 1907 as he sat over his traditional bowl of kombu sea vegetable and dried bonito tuna, as the story is told, Dr. Ikeda was struck by the rich and pleasurable savory, meaty and filling flavors of the broth. It didn’t taste of sweet or sour, or salt, nor bitter, what were considered the basic flavor elements. There was something else, something he couldn’t pin down. After lots of trial and error in the lab Ikeda finally isolated a substance in the kombu that gave his broth that wonderful rich flavor. Of course what he found was the amino acid glutamate. Thanks to Ritthausen’s work forty years prior. Ikeda had no idea what to call the new ‘taste’ so, on the advice of a colleague he called it umami – a Japanese term of long standing that was used when the quality of the food was particularly pleasing that it could be termed as ideal-typical. In Japanese umai means delicious, and mi means essence. In modern Japan the term umami is often used to denote anything that reaches a state of perfection.
A few years after Ikeda’s breakthrough (which led to the commercial creation of MSG), further lab work by one of Ikeda’s protégés, Dr. Shintaro Kodama revealed another powerful source of umami taste. Kodama identified the nucleotide called inosine monophosphate (IMP), which he found in katsuobushi, the dried bonito tune flakes from Ikeda’s broth. A nucleotide is a compound fundamental to both RNA and DNA and is the most basic of all genetic materials. Kodama’s real breakthrough however was his discovery that the IMP nucleotide dramatically enhanced and amplified the umami intensity of glutamate. The discovery of UMAMI SYNERGY, a hallmark of umami taste, had been made. By the end of the twentieth century nearly forty umami substances had been discovered. In the 1950s through 1970s several umami-triggering and umami-synergizing nucleotides were discovered, including adenosine monophosphate (AMP), guanosine monophosphate (GMP), and xanthosine monophosphate (XMP). In the 1990s there were several breakthroughs by leading umami researchers that uncovered other amino acids, as well as ibotenic and tricolomic acids, both found in many mushrooms, succinic acid, which is found in sake, shellfish and wine, theanine, a taste found in tea, and a octopeptide, a compound of eight amino acids, which is plentiful in beef broth, and is dubbed BMP for ‘meaty, beefy peptide’.
And any doubts about umami as a basic taste was eradicated when researchers at the University of Miami reported that they had discovered the umami ‘taste bud’. They identified a G-protein-coupled receptor on the tongue of a mouse named ‘taste-mGluR4’. It contains a molecule shaped perfectly for bonding with a complementary-shaped amino acid molecule. When this happens taste-mGluR4 chemically arouses the taste bud, an electrical signal goes off to the brain, and the brain identifies umami. This is a discovery of significant proportions for everyone who eats. By showing that umami us a genuine basic taste, it proves that the umami we love can’t be had any other way. We are genetically engineered and programmed to enjoy umami rich food. Unlike other eating sensations, tastes are biological imperatives. In evolutionary terms, they’ve acted as our last line of defense against poisons for millions of years. They also identify and measure basic nutrients we take in. By contrasts aromas may be something we like, something our appetites might be triggered by, but they tell us next to nothing about the nutritive value of foods. We can live without aroma, but we cannot live with carbohydrates, salt, or, apparently, umami.
There is another, basic physiological reason umami rich foods taste so good. Our brains like it (think pleasure points) when we give our bodies food that’s easy to use. Complete proteins are not easy to use (nor do they actually have much taste). Before we can process them, complete proteins must be broken down into their amino acid components via digestion. This requires energy – which is the main reason one feels tired after a big protein rich meal. Umami is the TASTE OF AMINO ACIDS THAT ARE READY FOR OUR BODIES TO USE IMMEDIATELY. Think about chicken soup or broth, rich in umami and useable amino acids, and why it makes us feel good when we are sick. It acts quickly in making us feel better, because our busy begins to break it down, digest and use it immediately! Modern science has thus shown that our almost unconscious yearning for umami underpins a complex system of biological imperatives and needs. We seek amino acids for protein-building, for use as metabolic fuel, and for many crucial functions, and we strike the umami highs when we mix them with nucleotides, which are critical to battling disease by the way. Nature has indeed created a wonderful mixture of cravings and desires for all FIVE tastes!
Well, all this science is all very good, but writing about this is making me hungry. So what are the most umami rich foods? Knowing what foods have which kind of umami in them (and many foods have both), and what state they are in (free or bound), can help you in preparing meals that are simply more rich and tasty!
Part 2: Umami Rich Ingredients
Meats & Poultry
High: Turkey, Duck, Venison, Veal, Pork (synergizing)
Moderate: Cornsh Hen, Chicken
Low: Beef, Pork (basic), Lamb. For umami rich dish sear and slow braise shanks, briskets
and chucks of beef, cook dry-aged cuts, or eat cured porks like bacon, prosciutto and serrano, veritable umami bombs.
Meats and poultry have both basic and synergizing umami, although their amounts vary considerably. Maturity is the key to umami in meat products. The older the animal, the richer and more abundant the basic umami. Surprisingly, beef is low in umami compared to pork and turkey. Strange perhaps but true!
Note: Other cured meats, including sausages, jerky and some cold cuts, boast elevated levels of umami. However, fresh sausages (Italian, knockwurst, chorizo, etc) are not cured, and when cooked develop only as much umami as the meats they are made from. Broths and stocks made from the meat and bone of meats and poultry contain a great deal of umami richness, especially when simmered long and slowly, releasing a wide assortment of amino acids and nucleotides in elevated concentrations.
Shellfish, Finfish & Cephalopods
High (Shelfish): Squid, octopus, oysters, scallops, mussels, clams, lobsters, sea urchin, shrimp and crab
High (Finfish): Herrings, anchovies, sardines, mackerel, tuna, bluefish and salmon
Medium (Finfish): Monkfish, trout, snapper, sea bass, and fish roe
Fish is an excellent source of both basic and synergizing umami. All finfish pick up additional umami richness when smoked, salt packed or pickled.
Dairy, Cheeses & Eggs
Very High: Long-aged hard cheeses (e.g.Parmigiano-Reggiano) and Blue cheeses (e.g. Roquefort,
Stilton, and Maytag), eggs (even raw, more when cooked)
High: Aged Brie, Gouda, Emmentaler, and Cheddar
Low: Buttermilk, yogurt, crème fraiche, and fresh cheeses like mozzarella
While fresh cow’s milk when raw has little basic or synergizing umami, fresh goat’s and sheep’s milk are both endowed with more of basic and synergizing umami, and their cheeses, even made fresh, are rich, in varying degrees with umami.
Mushrooms, Truffles, & Other Fungi
Mushrooms and other fungi are among the highest sources of synergizing umami in the natural world. Generally speaking the deeper the mushrooms color, the more umami. Dried mushrooms tend to have more umami than fresh. When it comes to truffles, the opposite is true. Piedmont’s white truffles have more umami than the Perigord Black. And don’t forget yeast. This common fungus is an amazing enzymatic workhorse.
Very High: Shiitakes, portobellos, morels and porcinis
High: Oysters, chanterelles, and cremini
Low: Enoki and white/button mushrooms are at the bottom.
Fruits & Vegetables
Basic Umami: Peas, other legumes, tomatoes, mature potatoes, red bell peppers, winter squashes, walnuts, almonds, and sunflower seeds.
Synergizing Umami: Asparagus, spinach, potatoes, and many legumes, including lima beans, kidney beans, navy beans, and lentils, usually brought about by cooking.
Grains
High: Corn, rice (when fermented)
Low: All others!
Grains are generally very low in umami, with two exceptions: corn and rice. Corn is very high in basic umami, while rice, while it lacks much in the way of free amino acids and is mostly complete protein, comes to umami richness when fermented, as in rice wine and wine vinegars, and especially in amazake (freshly steamed rice served with fermented rice liquids), and all forms of sake.
Soy Products & Condiments
Soy Sauce, Fish sauces in their various Eastern guises, Worcestershire sauce, Ketchup (Catsup)
The modest soybean is actually an amazing vegetable. It is among the most protein rich foods on Earth, rivaling most meats, and provides complete protein with all nine essential amino acids. Soybeans start out with modest umami, but as they are processed, the umami factor increases exponentially. Nonfermented soybeans (like soy milk, tofu, etc) show modest umami but when fermented the umami levels rival Parmesan. Soy sauce, tempeh (fermented soybean curd), natto (soybeans fermented without salt), and miso (long-aged fungus-cultured soy), are all high in umami.
Fish sauce was of course the first umami staple, back in the days of the Greeks and Romans. Fish sauces are common throughout the East. The West’s answer to fish sauce is of course Worcestershire sauce, an amazing combination of sweet, salty, tart and bitter. Full of synergizing anchovies, it’s no wonder this is umami paradise! However, don’t forget tomato ketchup of catsup. This other Western staple contain sweet sugar, sour vinegar, salty salt and ripe, red umami-loaded tomatoes. No wonder nearly everyone adores ketchup!!!!
Fermented & Pickled Vegetables & Fruits
High: Sauerkraut, kosher dills, Korean kimchi, olives (especially black), and pickled ginger.
There is a genetic reason we love pickled vegetables. The fermentation process generates amino acids, nucleotides, essential fatty acids, antioxidants, and healthy phytosterols which are all easy for our bodies to digest. And our body loves easy to digest foods!
Fermentation is a process which allows enzymes to break down the protein and genetic materials in plant foods without spoiling them. Salt is often added at the outset to ward off infection, and the foods are inoculated, either artificially or naturally, with harmless bacteria that go about digesting parts of the food. What is left behind is a preserved food rich in synergized umami. Unfermented pickling (normally using vinegar) doesn’t add any additional umami.
Fermented, Brewed & Distilled Beverages
High: Earthy, less fruit-driven wines (Europe), Beer, Sake
Moderate: Fruit-driven wines (California, Australia, South America)
When it comes to wine older, earthier, less fruity wines tend to deliver more umami, and pair better with a wider range of foods. Beer is also rich in umami, and think of how good is beer is with cheeseburgers, pizza, and Asian food – all umami rich dishes in themselves. Umami is so important in sake that the best sakes list the amino acids on their labels.
Sea Vegetables
Basic Umami: Sea vegetables are an especially concentrated source of basic umami. Look for kombu, arame, wakame, dulce, nori, laver, alaria, and kelp in their dry form in your local Asian market.
Synergizing Umami: Laver, which is used to make the nori wrapped around many sushi rolls, is a decent source.
Part 3: Cooking with Umami
This is the fun part, the actual cooking! There are two fundamental forms of umami any cook or chef must understand, as they fundamentally affect the final dish in different ways.
1) BASIC UMAMI
The first is basic umami, delivered by amino acids. Much, but as we’ve discovered far from all, basic umami tastes come from glutamic acid, the most abundant amino acid in nature. The rest comes from other amino acids and some peptides (chains of amino acids just a few molecules long). In order for these acids and peptides to taste of umami they must be in their free state, i.e. not bound up in a protein molecule.
Some foods are rich in these free amino acids when harvested and have a lot of umami taste when raw. Generally, the more mature the food, the higher the level of free amino acids. Other foods may have bound amino acids which, if they are to taste of umami, must be released from their protein molecules. There are two ways to do this.
i) The first is cooking, including KOKUMI-STYLE SEARING, which is essentially what is also termed the Maillard reaction. This is different from caramelizing (for example with onions and garlic when they are sautéed). Caramelizing only requires sugar. The Maillard reaction, which requires both amino acids and sugars, occurs when protein-rich foods are browned. Think grilled steak, seared chicken, roasted coffee, or bread bread to a golden brown color While caramelization takes place between 240 F (fructose) and 338 F (sucrose), the Maillard reaction, or Kokumi, takes place at heats as low as 250F, and even much lower temperatures, for example when brewing beer, aging balsamic vinegar, reducing stock to a demi-glace, or braising meat. Because amino acids are present in the Maillard reaction, food thus prepared exhibits a richer, more complex character than foods prepared using caramelization. But of course they are. They are dripping with umami.
ii) The second is to ALLOW THE EMZYMES TO RIP APART THE PROTEINS INTO THEIR AMINO ACID COMPONENTS. This can be natural or by introducing microbes to act as deconstructionists. Aging beef, making cheese, fermenting beer, and letting dough rise, are all examples of enzymic actions that release and liberate the umami tastes.
2) SYNERGIZING UMAMI
The second form of cooking with umami requires synergizing umami. This is delivered by the nucleotides discussed earlier. Nucleotides are the building blocks of RNA and DNA, and are most commonly referred to use using their monikers such as AMP, XMP, IMP, and GMP. These are found in abundance in meats, mushrooms and shellfish. They can be in both the free form and also bound up as part of larger molecules. As in basic umami, synergizing umami occurs when such larger molecules are broken down into their free nucleotide forms by cooking and enzymatic actions. Synergizing umami is particularly interesting because research has shown that when such foods are eaten alongside basic umami, the umami sensation is multiplied by many fold. Think of those amazing flavor explosions you sometime experience, and the foodgasm that comes with it. You are not imagining it – you are experiencing an umami bomb going off in your mouth and brain!
Summary
Well, if you made it to the end well done, and thanks for your patience! I hope this piece has given you some insight and understanding into what Umami is, and how it can enhance our culinary lives in so many amazing and varied ways. So grab some beer, wine, or sake, make a trip to your favorite butcher and grocery store, and cook up a wonderful umami rich dish! You know you want to.
About the Tulsa Wine Club:
Mark Stenner is the organizer of the Tulsa Wine Club, a local tasting group that meets once a month to sample wines. The tastings take place in private homes in the Tulsa metro area, and are casual and fun events. Participants of all age ranges enjoy 10-12 wines per event, served alongside the food each member contributes to the evening. They welcome anyone with an interest in wine, whether novice or expert. Mark believes in learning through osmosis, drinking wine and forming your own evaluation of your experience.
For information about the club, please email Mark at tulsawineclub@yahoo.com
Comments