There are five known fundamental tastes in the human palate: salty, sweet, sour, bitter, and umami. Umami is the proteiny, full-bodied taste of chicken soup, or cured meat, or fish stock, or aged cheese, or mother's milk, or soy sauce, or mushrooms, or seaweed, or cooked tomato. "Umami adds body," Gary Beauchamp, who heads the Monell Chemical Senses Center, in Philadelphia, says. "If you add it to a soup, it makes the soup seem like it's thicker—it gives it sensory heft. It turns a soup from salt water into a food." -Malcom Gladwell The Ketchup Conundrum http://www.gladwell.com/2004/2004_09_06_a_ketchup.html
From what I understand, simply put umami is "mouth feel", or the unctious wonderful rich feeling some foods have that is immediately satisfying when the food enters into the palate
The fifth taste. It's usually said that the human tongue can detect only four basic tastes: sweet, sour, bitter and salty, and that all tastes are combinations of these. Many specialists now believe that taste is actually more complicated than this, with the taste buds being helped along by sense of smell, by the feel of substances in the mouth and even by the noise that food makes when we chew it.
In recent years some workers have added a fifth taste, umami, to the other four, though western food scientists are divided about whether it really exists or not. It has been suggested that the taste is triggered by compounds of some amino acids, such as glutamates or aspartates, especially the flavour-enhancing substance monosodium glutamate.
Both the word and the concept are Japanese, and in Japan are of some antiquity. Umami is hard to translate, to judge by the number of English words that have been suggested as equivalents, such as savoury, essence, pungent, deliciousness, and meaty. Itís sometimes associated with a feeling of perfect quality in a taste, or of some special emotional circumstance in which a taste is experienced. It is also said to involve all the senses, not just that of taste. There's more than a suggestion of a spiritual or mystical quality about the word.
"Recently recognized, umami detects 'savoury' or 'meaty' sensations, and is stimulated by condiments like soy sauce, or by foods which contain glutamate compounds like MSG." --Schott's Food & Drink Miscellany
“Well, sometimes I feel like I want my popcorn to have just a little more umami — like when you have the urge to put Parmesan on it, or something to make it a little more complex." ~K. said here.
17 Comments
Natural Necessity Surf Shop?
-Malcom Gladwell
The Ketchup Conundrum
http://www.gladwell.com/2004/2004_09_06_a_ketchup.html
In recent years some workers have added a fifth taste, umami, to the other four, though western food scientists are divided about whether it really exists or not. It has been suggested that the taste is triggered by compounds of some amino acids, such as glutamates or aspartates, especially the flavour-enhancing substance monosodium glutamate.
Both the word and the concept are Japanese, and in Japan are of some antiquity. Umami is hard to translate, to judge by the number of English words that have been suggested as equivalents, such as savoury, essence, pungent, deliciousness, and meaty. Itís sometimes associated with a feeling of perfect quality in a taste, or of some special emotional circumstance in which a taste is experienced. It is also said to involve all the senses, not just that of taste. There's more than a suggestion of a spiritual or mystical quality about the word.
(from World Wide Words)