Umami - the fifth taste

MSG's prospects have been greatly improved by the food world's recent embrace of umami, the basic taste that is now an accepted addition to the old quartet of bitter, salty, sour, and sweet. (We perceive complex flavors in food when these fundamental tastes, picked up by receptors on our tongues, are supplemented by the more nuanced aromatic data we gather with our noses.) Umami and MSG have long been conflated. In 2000, when the journal Nature first reported the discovery of an umami taste receptor, it explained that umami is "better known in the west as monosodium glutamate (MSG)."

Connoisseurs argue that naturally occurring umami—found in glutamate-rich foodstuffs like mushrooms and parmesan cheese—is far superior to its synthesized cousin. But when they try to explain what's so great about the "delicious essence," they inevitably resort to verbal mushiness. When umami is not being written off as "the taste of MSG," it is described as "meaty," "brothy," "savory," or, vaguely smuttily, as "mouth-filling." The Kasabians suggest that umami might be "the taste of protein," since glutamate is abundant in breast milk and many meats. I think of umami as a scrumptious roundness in food, akin to a lovely cello note.

It's not surprising, then, that the chefs who contributed recipes to The Fifth Flavor—among them Nobu Matsuhisa and Daniel Boulud—boost umami with natural glutamate-rich sources like soy sauce and parmesan. Very few trendsetting chefs are willing to brush off the "natural is better" philosophy that has dominated the food scene for decades.

Even so, that doesn't mean you're avoiding MSG. The ingredient is simply hiding in plain sight. It thrives in the industrial food world, where it is known affectionately to scientists as E621. The next time you eat your favorite binge-inducing snack—Cool Ranch Doritos, say, or a McDonald's sausage McGriddle, or those little Japanese crackers wrapped in nori—lick the flavor dust off your fingers and read the ingredient label. You're quite likely to find MSG. If not, it is likely that some other glutamate-rich flavorant is producing the same taste. (Hydrolyzed soy protein, autolyzed yeast, and sodium caseinate, to name a few, all serve essentially the same purpose as MSG.) In their book, the Kasabians call the manufacturers' bluff: "Some would say that the public's widespread distrust of MSG has deeply moved food makers—not to take glutamate out of their food, but to find ways of delivering it under unassuming pseudonyms."

full story at http://www.slate.com/id/2140999/