Umami, Japan's "Fifth Flavor"
The Japanese didn’t invent what has come to be known as the “fifth flavor” – besides the well-known sweet, sour, bitter and salty – but a Japanese man named it: umami.
In 1907, during the first few decades of modern Japan, a chemist at Tokyo’s Imperial University named Kikunae Ikeda had an insight that the flavor of one of Japan’s staple foods – the broth called dashi, a basic ingredient in countless soups, sauces and stews – had a quality that, chemically and gastronomically, qualified it as a distinctive flavor.
By 1908, Ikeda had isolated the chemicals, the salts of glutamates, an amino acid, and given his discovery a new name: umami, a word combining the kanji for delicious (umai) and taste (mi). By 1909, he had developed a chemical process for isolating the brown crystals that contained the flavor: L-glutamate.
Ikeda’s discovery was scientific proof of what the Japanese, and chefs the world around, had known for centuries: that there is a “brothy” or “meaty” taste to some foods, particularly meats, seafoods, cheeses and fermented foods, that is uniquely satisfying. The presence of umami can add dimension to foods, balancing out other flavors – especially salt, but also sweet – and giving dishes a depth and satiation factor.
Subsequent Japanese chemists such as Shintaro Kodama (a student of Ikeda’s) and much later, Akira Kuninaka, discovered other foods that contained the chemical elements of umami, including dashi’s main ingredient, bonito flakes, and much later, shitake mushrooms. Kuninaka added greatly to the research when he proved that it was the chemical synergy between ribonucleotides and L-glutamate that created even stronger umami flavors.
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https://japanology.org/2016/10/umami-japans-fifth-flavor/
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