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Umami Part Two

If you google “weird words” on the internet, one of the first entries is “Umami.”  This is what www.worldwidewords.org has to say about umami:

“Both the word and the concept are Japanese, and in Japan are of some antiquity. Umami is hard to translate, to judge by the number of English words that have been suggested as equivalents, such as “savoury,” “essence,” “pungent,” “deliciousness,” and “meaty.”   It’s sometimes associated with a feeling of perfect quality in a taste, or of some special emotional circumstance in which a taste is experienced. It is also said to involve all the senses, not just that of taste. There’s more than a suggestion of a spiritual or mystical quality about the word.”

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Examples of Umami Foods

·        Aged beef (higher in umami compounds) rather than fresh beef

·        Cured ham rather than fresh pork

·        Tomatoes

·        Mature cheeses

·        Shitake mushrooms

·        Dried foods

·        Fermented foods

·        Worcestershire sauce.

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Kikunae Ikeda

Eastern thought has not been so rigid as western thought in confining flavours to the four basics of sweet, sour, salty and bitter.  For a long time, Asians have included “hot” as a taste.  In 1908, a Japanese scientist, Kikunae Ikeda, redefined this fifth element as something more than just hot. He isolated the amino acid glutamate as the one element that causes this taste in meat, milk, mushrooms, and seaweed broth and called the sensation "umami."

Umami was the taste that Ikeda detected in laminaria Japonica seaweed, often used as a part of soup stocks in Japanese cuisine, and was associated with glutamate (monosodium L-glutamic acid).  Later research showed that 5' nucleotides also had umami tastes and also had a combined with glutamates to enhance the umami taste.

monosodium L-glutamic acid

Tim Hanni, MW says this: “Rather than a specific flavour, umami is best described as a distinctive quality or completeness of flavour. The nearest English equivalent would be "savoury" or "delicious." Oriental food often gets umami, its "complete" flavour, by the addition of monosodium glutamate (MSG).”

It appears that Mr Hanni has been hired by MSG manufacturers to put a positive spin on MSG.  Still, whatever the public perception of MSG, glutamates in food seem to be the key to understanding umami and Hanni appears to be the expert.

The question is, “Is there a taste receptor on the tongue that responds to glutamates in the same way that the other four taste receptors respond to sweet, sour, bitter and saltiness?”

Apparently there is.  According to Decanter.com, the scientific journal Nature published an article in 2002, showing that American scientists Charles Zuker and Nick Ryber had identified a taste receptor on the tongue for amino acids.  This may go some way to support umami as a fifth flavour.  Decanter.com said this at the time of the discovery:

“Umami is the elusive 'fifth taste' whose presence until now has been doubted by scientists. There has been debate about whether it might be a combination of other tastes rather than a specific taste in its own right.

Now an amino acid receptor - a taste cell in the tongue - has been discovered by American academics Charles Zuker and Nick Ryber. This receptor - which can recognise amino acids - appears to settle the argument.

A key question now is whether amino acids affect the taste of wine, which typically contains 1-4 grams per litre of these compounds. Zuker reckons these levels of amino acids would 'robustly' activate the umami receptor.

'Amino acids clearly play a role in the taste of wine,' he told decanter.com. 'But because the perception of wine reflects the interaction of so many tastes in such a complex mixture, we cannot assign a value to the contribution of the umami receptor versus the sweet, sour, bitter and salty receptors.' “

So it appears that umami is not only present in food, but also present in wine. 

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Five Basic Taste Sensations in Wine and Food

• Sweet

Related to amount of residual sugar in both foods and wines.

• Sour

Degree of acidity in both foods and wines (more so whites than reds).

• Salty

Not significant in wine, but significant in how wine components relate to it in dishes.

• Bitter

In some foods, and in the tannin content of reds (or whites aged in new oak barrels).

• Umami

Amino acid related sensation of “deliciousness” in many foods, and in some finer wines.

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From a purely subjective point of view, it would appear that the complex characters of umami in food are reflected in older, more mature wines. 

Older, mature wines such as Cabernet Sauvignon pick up umami characteristics

According to Tim Hanni MW, all five basic tastes, including umami, have an effect on how a wine tastes when eaten with a food. In his view, the way to combine wine and food is to understand how the dominant taste in food impacts the perception of the taste of wine, and make appropriate adjustments to seasonings.

The Principles of Umami in Wine and Food Matching

To summarise, the principles of umami food and wine matching are these:

·        Sweetness in food will increase the perception of sourness, bitterness and astringency of the wine while making the wine appear less sweet (more dry), stronger and less fruity.

·        Foods with high amounts of acidity will decrease our perception of sourness in the wine and make the wine taste richer and more mellow. If the wine is sweet to begin with it will appear sweeter.

·        Combinations of sweetness and sourness in food can cancel each other out depending on the concentration level of each. If one or the other dominates the wine will react according to the basic formula.

·        Bitter, sweet and umami flavors in food will increase the perception of bitter elements in wine.

·        Sourness and salt in the food suppress bitter taste in the wine.

·        The judicious addition of salt to food, especially to sauces and other foods high in umami, can be useful in some cases to tone down bitterness and astringency of some wines. You may find that salty foods make sweet wines taste sweeter.[1]

So next time you go out to dinner, order more complex, umami type foods and match it with an older wine.  You might be surprised how well the two go together.   Ben Killerby