Add a fifth taste to sweet, sour, salty and bitter and you're in for a sensory treat.
When we eat, we use all our senses (taste, touch, smell, sight and hearing) to form general judgments about our food, but it is taste that is the most influential in determining how delicious a food is.
Back in school, I was taught that our sense of taste comprises four
primary tastes - sweet, sour, salty and bitter. It was only in the late 20th century that a fifth primary taste was officially identified and named - "umami".
In 1908 in Japan, Professor Kikunae Ikeda identified this taste, which translates to deliciousness or savouriness.
In 1996 and 2002, two separate teams of scientists disproved the belief that certain areas of the tongue were responsible for detecting the four different tastes. Their findings support the even distribution of taste between all the tongue's cell receptors.
Recent research has discovered umami taste receptors in part of the vagus nerve in the stomach. The signal sent to the brain prepares the stomach for the digestion of the proteins we are consuming.
Umami is prominent in Japanese cuisine and found in soy sauce, sweet cooking wine called mirin, fermented soya bean paste called miso, dried shiitake mushrooms and a stock made from dried kombu seaweed and bonito, called dashi.
In the West, it is prominent in tomatoes, mushrooms, diary products and cured meats. The processes of drying, smoking, salting and ageing releases the glutamate that contains the umami taste.
Globally, tasty treats such as anchovies, sauerkraut, Iberian cured ham, fish sauce, tomato sauce and that good ol' favourite, Vegemite, have the umami taste.
Heston Blumenthal from the Fat Duck, now most associated with the wild and wacky Heston Feasts on TV, holds this particular subject close to his heart.
Blumenthal researched and designed a dish that best represented umami, called the "Sound of the Sea". This culinary invention was based around the taste, aroma, and overall seaside experience. Umami-rich sea-related flavours were used to conjure up a nostalgic memory of a seaside experience for the diner. His research into sound and multi-sensory aspects of gastronomy showed how much sound can alter our perception of flavour. Thus the dish is served with an iPod playing sounds of the seaside to immerse guests in their own individual memories while they experience the dish.
Heston places great importance on umami and its role in giving food its unique character.
As Nobuyuki Matsuhisa, from the Nobu restaurant chain, has said: "As people come to appreciate umami, the taste and the quality of food will advance and people will become more healthy."
