Umami – The reason we love bacon??
This morning I was looking through The Costco Connection magazine, when I came across this article Uma-what? Umami is more familiar than you think. Since Uma-what? is actually what I think when I hear Umami. I read the article and then went to Wikipedia to find out more about Umami. Umami is a savory taste and is one of the five basic tastes, the others are sweet, sour, bitter and salt. Umami .translates as a “pleasant savory taste” which comes from the taste of glutamates and nucleotides. Th use of Glutamate has been around in cooking for a long time according to Wikipedia…
Fermented fish sauces (garum), which are rich in glutamate, were used widely in ancient Rome,[15] fermented barley sauces (murri) rich in glutamate were used in medieval Byzantine and Arab cuisine,[16] and fermented fish sauces and soy sauces have histories going back to the 3rd century in China.
In 1908 Umami was first “scientifically identified” in a professor of the Tokyo Imperial University Kikunae Ikeda,. Kikunae found that glutamate was responsible for the palatability of the broth from kombu seaweed. He noticed that the taste of kombu dashi was distinct from sweet, sour, bitter and salty and named it umami! Ever since umami’s existence was proposed by Kikunae scientists have debated whether umami was a basic taste. It wasn’t until 1985 that…..
the term umami was recognized as the scientific term to describe the taste of glutamates and nucleotides at the first Umami International Symposium in Hawaii.[8] Umami represents the taste of the amino acidL-glutamate and 5’-ribonucleotides such as guanosine monophosphate (GMP) and inosine monophosphate (IMP).[9] It can be described as a pleasant “brothy” or “meaty” taste with a long lasting, mouthwatering and coating sensation over the tongue. The sensation of umami is due to the detection of the carboxylate anion of glutamate in specialized receptor cells present on the human and other animal tongues.[
The explains why I may have never learned about umami in school!! Now my children first experienced umami from their mother’s breast milk and I can attest to the fact that they all loved that savory taste!!
More from Wikipedia…
Umami has a mild but lasting aftertaste that is difficult to describe. It induces salivation and a sensation of furriness on the tongue, stimulating the throat, the roof and the back of the mouth.[20][21] By itself, umami is not palatable, but it makes a great variety of foods pleasant especially in the presence of a matching aroma.
….Naturally occurring glutamate can be found in meats and vegetables, whereas inosinate comes primarily from meats and guanylate from vegetables. Thus, umami taste is common to foods that contain high levels of L-glutamate, IMP and GMP, most notably in fish, shellfish, cured meats, mushrooms, vegetables (e.g., ripe tomatoes, Chinese cabbage, spinach, celery, etc.) or green tea, and fermented and aged products (e.g., cheeses, shrimp pastes, nutritional yeast, soy sauce, etc.)
In The Costco Connection article, they write the following about the umami of beef and pork – “The mystery of Why Americans love barbecues and adding bacon to everything has been solved!! and considering that mushrooms, tomatoes and cheese are also rich in umami is it any wonder that we love pizza!!
The recipe that is included with the article on umami in the Costco Connection was for Sausage-Spinach-Stuffed Mushrooms, sounds good to me. I may have to try it!!