Put the Science of Umami to Work for You
24th November 2015
Between the battle of Marengo and today, the so-called fifth taste, which is the subject of a book by Mouritsen and a Danish chef named Klavs Styrbaek, has come far. In 1908, a Japanese chemist, Kikunae Ikeda, first set out to analyze just what made seaweed broth — the dashi that forms the basis of much Japanese cooking — so delicious. In his laboratory at the University of Tokyo, Ikeda brewed 26 pounds of dried kombu seaweed into broth, and looked at each chemical component of the broth in turn. He was able to isolate about an ounce of one particular crystal that embodied the unique flavor of the dashi. The crystal was monosodium glutamate, and Ikeda’s coinage to denote its distinctive sapid taste, “umami,” stuck.