Hard to believe, given all the foods in the world, but it’s generally recognized that our palate can only discern four primary tastes: sweet, sour, salty, and bitter (as well as any combination therein).
Not so fast. More than a hundred years ago, the Japanese discovered a fifth taste that they refer to as “umami.” The Japanese word for “deliciousness,” umami is what chefs seek to replicate in the brain: a sense of delight that overwhelms the palate.
Nearly a decade ago, a researcher discovered the umami receptor on the tongue, hidden within the receptor for sweetness. Want to know what umami tastes like? Think of Parmesan cheese, or kombu seaweed, or Worcestershire sauce – or if you can remember that far back, your mother’s breast milk.
© Laura Santtini
For years, the sense of umami was replicated by the much-reviled monosodium glutamate (MSG), but umami is also found naturally in meats, cheeses, and mushrooms.
Cookbook author and food writer, Laura Santtini dedicated an entire section of her cookbook Easy Tasty Italian to umami – and so it was perhaps inevitable that Santtini would create Taste #5 Umami Paste by combining some of the most umami-rich, Italian ingredients into one paste, squeezable from a tube.
The heady combination of tomato purée, garlic, Parmesan cheese, black olive, anchovy paste, and porcini mushrooms makes for an addictive addition to nearly everything, including pastas, soups, stews – or simply slathered on crostini and panini.
Bite into Taste #5 Umami Paste and watch your face break into a smile; that’s called umami.
