umami
noun

- a strong taste that is not sweet, sour, salty, or bitter and that is often referred to as "the fifth taste“

- the taste sensation that is produced by several amino acids and nucleotides (such as glutamate and aspartate) and has a rich or meaty flavor characteristic of cheese, cooked meat, mushrooms, soy, and ripe tomatoes

The Cambridge Dictionary, Merriam-Webster 

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WORD ORIGIN

"Umami" (うま味) is a loanword from Japanese, meaning “pleasant savoury taste”,… combining (うま) “delicious” or “tasty” with mi (味) “taste”.

This neologism was coined in 1908 by Japanese chemist Professor Kikunae Ikeda. In 1907, Ikeda, while savouring a bowl of boiled tofu in kombu dashi (a broth made from kelp), became convinced that there was another basic taste altogether different from sweet, salty, sour, and bitter. By 1908, he isolated crystals made of glutamate that conveyed this taste and coined the term umami to describe it.

In 1985, the term umami was recognized as the scientific term to describe  this fifth basic taste, though it took nearly 100 years for umami to be globally accepted as a distinct flavour, requiring almost a century after Ikeda’s 1908 discovery to obtain global scientific recognition.  

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FROM SEAWEED TO SOUP

Most people are surprised to learn that one of the world’s most successful seasonings began in a Japanese laboratory. In 1908, Professor Kikunae Ikeda, a chemist at Tokyo Imperial University, discovered that the savoury depth in a bowl of seaweed soup came from glutamic acid. Fascinated, he developed a way to extract it and make it commercially available as a seasoning. He called it “Aji-no-moto,”meaning “Essence of Flavour,” and helped found the Ajinomoto company in 1909. The timing was perfect: Japan was becoming increasingly urban, and busy families wanted quicker, tastier meals.

For years, the product remained largely in Asia. But in the 1930s and 40s, as Chinese restaurants spread in cities like San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York, Western diners began to encounter this “fifth taste.” In English, however, it shed its poetic name and gained a purely chemical one—monosodium glutamate, or MSG, a substance that enhances umami taste.

While MSG has since gone through cycles of acceptance and suspicion, scientists today agree it is safe in normal quantities. What began with a quiet professor and a bowl of seaweed broth is now a seasoning used worldwide in Worcester and soy sauce, bouillon cubes and powders (Knorr, Oxo, Maggi, etc.), and many barbecue sauces. 

Helga & Paul Smith

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SYNONYMS

all-purpose seasoning, artificial flavour enhancer, broth booster, brothy, crystal seasoning, deep flavour, depth of flavour, fifth (basic) taste, flavour amplifier (booster, enhancer, powder, salt), glutamate, glutamic acid, meaty (essence, richness, taste), meatiness, monosodium glutamate, MSG, savouriness, savoury (depth, dust, enhancer, savory essence, flavour, note, richness, salt), seasoning powder, taste amplifier (richness), the fifth dimension of flavour, UMAMI, umami salt, well-rounded flavour

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SMUGGLE
 OWAD into a conversation today, say something like:

“It's interesting that the UMAMI flavouring of soy and Worcester sauce began with the taste of seaweed soup in a Japanese laboratory back In 1908.”

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