In search of the fifth taste

Rob Price

I was chewing a mouthful of Yorkshire pudding Christmas night when I had a revelation.

The Yorkshire featured an obvious basic taste: salt, which I had shaken all over the pudding after dousing it with gravy. None of the other basic tastes - sweetness, sourness and bitterness - were present in its pleasing flavor. But there was something more in that flavor: a combination of meatiness and fattiness, as if the essence of good roast beef had been distilled into a single morsel.

Eureka, I thought. This must be umami.

I had spent the previous week reading about umami, a Japanese word that translates loosely into "savory." But foods rich in umami have something more going for them than simple savoriness. Scientists, at least the scientists I had been reading about, speculate that umami is a fifth taste sensation, previously unidentified in western science.

According to my research, the umami taste sensation comes from glutamate, a form of glutamic acid, which is basically a kind of amino acid. Some forms of seaweed are rich in glutamates, and Japanese cooks have used these seaweeds for centuries to take advantage of the rich flavors they impart to soups and stews.

Here in the Southern Tier, unfortunately, seaweed is rare. But you and I have been exposed to glutamates in other kinds of food, notably pizza. Pizza is rich in glutamates because it uses tomatoes as the base for its sauce. Tomatoes are rich in glutamates, which is why, when you bite into a wedge of good pizza, you feel as if your very soul is being caressed. You feel at peace - a peace you may have experienced at a very young age when your mother nursed you at her breast. Human breast milk contains 10 times the amount of glutamic acid as cow's milk.

Aged cheeses also contain high levels of glutamate, which is why you should cultivate a taste for sharp cheddar cheese and skip the milder cheddars. A good sharp cheddar, rich in glutamates, will make you feel happy. So will Parmessan cheese, a key ingredient in fettucini Alfredo. Mix Parmessan cheese with tomatoes, and you have glutamate on a plate, also known as ziti.

Savy cooks have been using a chemically synthesized form of glutamic acid for years. It's called monosodium glutamate, or MSG, a key ingredient of Chinese food. MSG was isolated in 1907 and patented by the Japanese corporation Ajinomoto in 1909. You can find it in commercial flavor enhancers, such as Accent, but MSG also has gotten a bad rap because it is rumored to cause something called Chinese Restaurant Syndrome. Alleged symptoms include headaches, dizziness

and tingling sensations. At the same time, food scholars such as Jeffrey Steingarten have argued CRS is an American urban myth. If MSG causes headaches, Steingarten asks, why is it all of China is not suffering from a headache? My advice is, shake a little MSG on your next hamburger and begin your own research.

Obviously, I am a man sold on the idea of the fifth taste. Why? Because, going back to my sixth grade science class, I have always found the idea of four basic tastes - with four corresponding taste bud clusters on the tongue - overly restrictive. The idea of food divided into four basic tastes - sweet, sour, salty, bitter - failed to explain why I liked ... well, Yorkshire pudding, which I first tasted at the age of 11.

My thought is, we might be happier people, and we might have a happier new year, if we were to move beyond the four basic taste groups and pursue a flavor that offers an alternative taste, distinct in itself but also residing comfortably alongside the four traditional tastes. Like your food salty? OK, but add a little umami.

For that matter, we could all use a little umami in our personal lives. Tired of the basic categories of human relationships? Friend/foe; team mate/ competitor? Add a little umami. Let a simple, gentle, undemanding friendliness be the fifth, mysterious taste in your relationships.

And have a happy new year.