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Umami
 
 
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is one of the five basic tastes
Taste

Sorry, no overview for this topic
 sensed by specialized receptor cells present on the human tongue
Tongue

The tongue is skeletal muscle on the floor of the mouth that manipulates food for chewing . It is the primary organ of taste. Much of the upper surface of the tongue is covered in papillae and taste buds....
. Umami is a loanword
Loanword

A loanword is a word directly taken into one language from another with little or no translation. By contrast, a calque or loan translation is a related concept whereby it is the Meaning or idiom that is borrowed rather than the lexical item itself....
 from Japanese
Japanese language

IPA: [n?iho?go] is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is related to the Ryukyuan languages....
 meaning roughly "delicious flavor", although "brothy", "meaty", or "savory" have been proposed as alternate translations. The same taste is also known as xianwèi ( literally "Fresh Flavor") in Chinese cooking
Chinese cuisine

Chinese cuisine originated from the various regions of China and has become widespread in many other parts of the world ? from Asia to the Americas, Australia, Western Europe and Southern Africa....
. In as much as it describes the flavor common to savory products such as meat, cheese, and mushroom
Mushroom

A mushroom is the fleshy, spore-bearing fruiting body of a fungus, typically produced above ground on soil or on its food source. The standard for the name "mushroom" is the cultivated white button mushroom, Agaricus bisporus, hence the word mushroom is most often applied to those fungi that have a stem , a cap , and gills on the unde...
s, umami is similar to Brillat-Savarin's concept of osmazome, an early attempt to describe the main flavoring component of meat as extracted in the process of making stock
Stock (food)

Stock is a flavoured liquid. It forms the basis of many dishes, particularly soups and sauces. Stock is prepared by simmering various ingredients in water, including some or all of the following:...
.

The umami taste is due to the detection of the carboxylate anion
Carboxylate anion

A carboxylate anion is an ion with negative chargethat contains the group -COO−. It is the conjugate base of a carboxylic acid....
 of glutamic acid
Glutamic acid

Glutamic acid is one of the 20 proteinogenic amino acids and its codons are GAA and GAG. It is a non-essential amino acid. The carboxylate anions and salt of glutamic acid are known as glutamates....
, a naturally occurring amino acid
Amino acid

In chemistry, an amino acid is a molecule containing both amine and carboxyl functional groups. These molecules are particularly important in biochemistry, where this term refers to alpha-amino acids with the general formula H2NCHRCOOH, where R is an organic substituent....
 common in meat
Meat

In modern English usage, meat most often refers to animal biological tissue used as food, mostly skeletal muscle and associated fat, but it may also refer to offal, including livers, skin, brains, bone marrow, kidneys, in some countries lungs, and a variety of other internal organs as well as blood....
s, cheese
Cheese

Cheese is a food consisting of proteins and fat from milk, usually the milk of cattle, Water Buffalo, goats, or sheep's milk. It is produced by Coagulation of the milk protein casein....
, broth
Broth

Broth is a liquid in which bones, meat, fish, cereal grains, or vegetables have been simmering. Broth is used as a basis for other edible liquids such as soup, gravy, or sauce....
, stock
Stock (food)

Stock is a flavoured liquid. It forms the basis of many dishes, particularly soups and sauces. Stock is prepared by simmering various ingredients in water, including some or all of the following:...
, and other protein
Protein

Proteins are organic compounds made of amino acids arranged in a linear chain and joined together by peptide bonds between the carboxyl and amino groups of adjacent amino acid Residue ....
-heavy foods.






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is one of the five basic tastes
Taste

Sorry, no overview for this topic
 sensed by specialized receptor cells present on the human tongue
Tongue

The tongue is skeletal muscle on the floor of the mouth that manipulates food for chewing . It is the primary organ of taste. Much of the upper surface of the tongue is covered in papillae and taste buds....
. Umami is a loanword
Loanword

A loanword is a word directly taken into one language from another with little or no translation. By contrast, a calque or loan translation is a related concept whereby it is the Meaning or idiom that is borrowed rather than the lexical item itself....
 from Japanese
Japanese language

IPA: [n?iho?go] is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is related to the Ryukyuan languages....
 meaning roughly "delicious flavor", although "brothy", "meaty", or "savory" have been proposed as alternate translations. The same taste is also known as xianwèi ( literally "Fresh Flavor") in Chinese cooking
Chinese cuisine

Chinese cuisine originated from the various regions of China and has become widespread in many other parts of the world ? from Asia to the Americas, Australia, Western Europe and Southern Africa....
. In as much as it describes the flavor common to savory products such as meat, cheese, and mushroom
Mushroom

A mushroom is the fleshy, spore-bearing fruiting body of a fungus, typically produced above ground on soil or on its food source. The standard for the name "mushroom" is the cultivated white button mushroom, Agaricus bisporus, hence the word mushroom is most often applied to those fungi that have a stem , a cap , and gills on the unde...
s, umami is similar to Brillat-Savarin's concept of osmazome, an early attempt to describe the main flavoring component of meat as extracted in the process of making stock
Stock (food)

Stock is a flavoured liquid. It forms the basis of many dishes, particularly soups and sauces. Stock is prepared by simmering various ingredients in water, including some or all of the following:...
.

The umami taste is due to the detection of the carboxylate anion
Carboxylate anion

A carboxylate anion is an ion with negative chargethat contains the group -COO−. It is the conjugate base of a carboxylic acid....
 of glutamic acid
Glutamic acid

Glutamic acid is one of the 20 proteinogenic amino acids and its codons are GAA and GAG. It is a non-essential amino acid. The carboxylate anions and salt of glutamic acid are known as glutamates....
, a naturally occurring amino acid
Amino acid

In chemistry, an amino acid is a molecule containing both amine and carboxyl functional groups. These molecules are particularly important in biochemistry, where this term refers to alpha-amino acids with the general formula H2NCHRCOOH, where R is an organic substituent....
 common in meat
Meat

In modern English usage, meat most often refers to animal biological tissue used as food, mostly skeletal muscle and associated fat, but it may also refer to offal, including livers, skin, brains, bone marrow, kidneys, in some countries lungs, and a variety of other internal organs as well as blood....
s, cheese
Cheese

Cheese is a food consisting of proteins and fat from milk, usually the milk of cattle, Water Buffalo, goats, or sheep's milk. It is produced by Coagulation of the milk protein casein....
, broth
Broth

Broth is a liquid in which bones, meat, fish, cereal grains, or vegetables have been simmering. Broth is used as a basis for other edible liquids such as soup, gravy, or sauce....
, stock
Stock (food)

Stock is a flavoured liquid. It forms the basis of many dishes, particularly soups and sauces. Stock is prepared by simmering various ingredients in water, including some or all of the following:...
, and other protein
Protein

Proteins are organic compounds made of amino acids arranged in a linear chain and joined together by peptide bonds between the carboxyl and amino groups of adjacent amino acid Residue ....
-heavy foods. Salts of the glutamic acid
Glutamic acid

Glutamic acid is one of the 20 proteinogenic amino acids and its codons are GAA and GAG. It is a non-essential amino acid. The carboxylate anions and salt of glutamic acid are known as glutamates....
, known as glutamates, easily hydrolyze and give the same taste. For this reason they are used as flavor enhancers. The most commonly used of these is monosodium glutamate
Monosodium glutamate

Monosodium glutamate, also known as sodium glutamate and MSG, is a sodium salt of the non-essential amino glutamic acid. It is used as a food additive and is commonly marketed as a flavour enhancer....
 (MSG). While the umami taste is due to glutamates, 5'-ribonucleotides such as guanosine monophosphate
Guanosine monophosphate

Guanosine monophosphate, also known as 5'-guanidylic acid or guanylic acid and abbreviated GMP, is a nucleotide that is found in RNA....
 (GMP) and inosine monophosphate (IMP) greatly enhance its perceived intensity. Since these ribonucleotides are also acids, their salts are sometimes added together with glutamates to obtain a synergisitic flavor enhancement effect.

Excitatory substances


Umami as a separate taste was first identified in 1908 by Kikunae Ikeda
Kikunae Ikeda

Kikunae Ikeda was a Japanese chemist, Tokyo Imperial University professor in Chemistry who, in 1908, uncovered the chemical root behind a taste he named umami....
 of the Tokyo Imperial University
University of Tokyo

The , abbreviated as , is a major research university located in Tokyo, Japan. The University has 10 faculty with a total of around 30,000 students, 2,100 of whom are foreign....
 while researching the strong flavor in seaweed broth. Ikeda isolated monosodium glutamate
Monosodium glutamate

Monosodium glutamate, also known as sodium glutamate and MSG, is a sodium salt of the non-essential amino glutamic acid. It is used as a food additive and is commonly marketed as a flavour enhancer....
 as the chemical responsible and, with the help of the Ajinomoto
Ajinomoto

, is a Japanese company that produces food seasonings, cooking oils, foods and pharmaceuticals.The literal translation of Aji no Moto is ?Essence of Taste,? used as a trademark for the company?s monosodium glutamate ....
 company, began commercial distribution of MSG products.

Glutamate
Glutamic acid

Glutamic acid is one of the 20 proteinogenic amino acids and its codons are GAA and GAG. It is a non-essential amino acid. The carboxylate anions and salt of glutamic acid are known as glutamates....
 has a long history in cooking: it appears in Asian foods such as soy sauce
Soy sauce

Soy sauce , soya sauce , or shoyu is a fermentation sauce made from soybeans , roasted cereal, water and Sodium chloride. Soy sauce was invented in China, where it has been used as a condiment for close to 2,500 years....
 and fish sauce
Fish sauce

Fish sauce is a condiment that is derived from fish that have been allowed to fermentation . It is an essential ingredient in many curries and sauces....
, and in Italian food in parmesan cheese and anchovies. It also is directly available in monosodium glutamate (MSG).

Taste receptors

Acknowledged subjectively as a special taste by Eastern civilizations for generations, umami has been described in biochemical studies identifying the actual taste receptor
Taste receptor

A Taste receptor is a type of Receptor which facilitates the sensation of taste.Examples include TAS2R16 and TAS2R38.They are divided into two families:...
 responsible for the sense of umami, a modified form of mGluR4
Metabotropic glutamate receptor 4

Glutamate receptor, metabotropic 4, also known as GRM4, is a human gene....
 named "taste-mGluR4".

Umami tastes are initiated by these specialized receptors, with subsequent steps involving secretion
Secretion

Secretion is the process of, elaborating and releasing Chemical compound from a cell , or a secreted chemical substance or amount of substance. In contrast to excretion, the substance may have a certain function, rather than being a waste product....
 of neurotransmitters, including adenosine triphosphate
Adenosine triphosphate

This article is about the chemical used by cells as an energy carrier. For other uses, see ATP .Adenosine-5'-triphosphate is a multifunctional nucleotide, and plays an important role in cell biology as a coenzyme that is the "molecule unit of currency" of intracellular energy transfer....
 (ATP) and serotonin
Serotonin

Serotonin is a monoamine neurotransmitter synthesized in serotonergic neurons in the central nervous system and enterochromaffin cells in the gastrointestinal tract of animals including humans....
. Other evidence indicate guanosine
Guanosine

Guanosine is a nucleoside comprising guanine attached to a ribose ring via a ?-N9-glycosidic bond.Guanosine can be phosphorylated to become GMP , cGMP , GDP and GTP ....
 derivatives may interact with and boost the initial umami signal.

Cells responding to umami taste stimuli do not possess typical synapses but instead secrete the neurotransmitter ATP in a mechanism exciting sensory fibers that convey taste signals to the brain. These taste receptors are located everywhere on the tongue.

In monkey studies, most umami signals from taste buds excite neurons in the orbitofrontal cortex
Orbitofrontal cortex

The orbitofrontal cortex is a region of association cerebral cortex of the human brain involved in cognition processes such as decision-making....
 of the brain, showing spatially-specific characteristics:
  • There is a cortical map representation for the taste of glutamate separate from that of other taste stimuli like sweet (glucose
    Glucose

    Glucose , a monosaccharide also known as grape sugar, blood sugar, or corn sugar, is a very important carbohydrate in biology....
    ), salt (sodium chloride
    Sodium chloride

    Sodium chloride, also known as common salt, table salt, or halite, is a chemical compound with the chemical formula SodiumChlorine....
    ), bitter (quinine
    Quinine

    Quinine is a natural white crystalline alkaloid having antipyretic , antimalarial drug, analgesic , and anti-inflammatory properties and a bitter taste....
    ), and sour (hydrochloric acid
    Hydrochloric acid

    Hydrochloric acid is the solution of hydrogen chloride in water. It is a highly corrosive, strong acid mineral acid and has major industrial uses....
    )
  • Single neurons having vigorous responses to sodium glutamate also respond to glutamic acid
  • Some neurons display a mechanism of satiety, indicating a process by which taste receptors in the mouth may interact with cortical neurons to curtail eating
  • Umami flavor is strongest when combined with aromas (e.g., monosodium glutamate and garlic
    Garlic

    Allium sativum L., commonly known as garlic, is a species in the onion family Alliaceae. Its close relatives include the onion, shallot, leek, and chive....
    ), a result leading to speculation that glutamate may stimulate umami effects by acting simultaneously with the aromas, texture, and appearance of food.


See also


  • Inosine monophosphate


External links

  • , CBC News, June 1, 2007
  • NPR, November 1, 2007
  • , by Katy McLaughlin, Wall Street Journal, 12/8/07.
  • : huitlacoche is another beispiel, 24/7/08.