When we were growing up, there learned that there were four
basic tastes: salt, sweet, sour and bitter. We were told that
our taste buds had special taste receptors in particular zones
on our tongues that detected these four tastes and that all
other components of flavor came from our olfactory sense–the
sense of smell. Well, it turns out that what we learned in
middle school about tastes, our tongues and noses, was not quite
complete or correct. There is a fifth basic taste. It is called
“umami,” and a Japanese scientist named Kitunae Ikeda isolated
one compound which contibutes this taste back in 1908. Working
with a seaweed broth, he isolated the amino acid, glutamate, as
one of the sources for the taste which is described as “meaty,
rich, savory and satisfying.” Glutamate itself was already a
known substance, having been discovered in 1866 by a German
chemist named Dr. Karl Ritthausen who discovered it while
studying gluten in wheat. “Umami” itself is a compound Japanese
word, from the root words, “umai”