A few years back, umami was finally recognised as the fifth taste, after salty, sour, sweet and bitter. But, even so, how many of us can say what it really tastes like?
Heston Blumenthal Saturday July 13, 2002 The Guardian Umami is a word that sounds as if it would be more at home in a Reeves and Mortimer sketch than in a kitchen. But it’s not some comedy codeword – it’s the fifth taste. Is this all sounding cryptic enough for you? We’ve long been told, in the western world at least, that there are four basic tastes (taste being what we perceive in the mouth and on the tongue, as opposed to flavour, which is registered in our olfactory bulb, behind the bridge of the nose): salty, sweet, bitter and sour. But, for a while now, there has been widespread acceptance of a fifth taste – namely, umami. In 1825, the French gastronome Brillat-Savarin, in his book The Physiology Of Taste, used the word “osmosone” to describe the “meaty” taste. Professor Edmund Rolls, one of the world’s leading experts on the psychology of flavour, kindly gave me some background information on the subject. The term umami was first coined by the scientist Kikunae Ikeda of the Toky
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