And They Scoffed at Escoffier!
November 5th, 2007 by satWell, the scientific world is finally coming online to the fact that we humans have the capacity to taste something beyond the four “majors,” sweet, salty, sour, and bitter. And that taste has been christened umami. The Japanese (and other Asian cultures) have referred regularly to this fifth taste, which we refer to as glutamate. In 1907, a Japanese professor, Kikunae Ikeda chemically isolated glutamate, in the process proving that it has none of the properties of the four majors tastes, yet we can still taste it. Most of the world just ordered in Chinese food for the next hundred years, and wondered why it didn’t taste as good when they asked for it without MSG.
Long before Ikeda, the first French master chef, Auguste Escoffier claimed the knowledge of glutamate, but as he lived in and for the kitchen, was never able to scientifically prove its existence, or even name it. Scientists the world over, ever since the days of the classical Greek philosophers, insisted there were only four tastes humans could comprehend, end of story. Escoffier would cite the miraculous transformation that occurs in a long-cooked stock compared to a short-cooked one, but nobody really listened. Those fortunate enough to taste his cooking just knew it was the most amazing food they ever tasted, but didn’t care much as to why.
Want to know more about umami/glutamate? Visit www.glutamate.org. This site will explain it far better than I ever could. The short explanation about umami is that it occurs naturally in some foods, and in other cases is the result of cooking or fermentation.
Revel in the knowledge that your tongue can taste five glorious flavors, not just four. P.S… Sensitivity to MSG is extraordinarily rare. Check out Jeffrey Steingarten’s essay, Why Doesn’t China Have A Headache?
Comments (0) | Trackbacks (1) | Permalink
Posted in Kvetch |
November 5th, 2007 at 10:09 pm
[…] Most all of us have learned from the time we were little that there were 4 primary elements to taste: sweet, sour, salty and bitter. It turns out that 4 is selling our tongues short. Science has proven that there is actually a 5th element, discovered by a Japanese professor named Kikunae Ikeda, who named it ‘Umami’. This is the element at work in MSG. Basically, you might think of it as being synonymous with ‘delicious’– it’s an element which has no distinct taste of its own, but somehow makes other things taste better. You can learn more about umami at the Samantha Cooks blog– And They Scoffed at Escoffier! […]