InternetIsBeautiful @feddit.de JohnJVaccaro @lemmy.sdf.org 1y ago

Umami: You never say its name, yet you taste it every day

bigthink.com Umami: You never say its name, yet you taste it every day

Sweet, bitter, salty, sour. These are the four basic tastes we were taught in grade school. But there is a fifth: umami. And it's everywhere.

The Fifth Taste....

35 comments

Is this news? I've heard of it regularly for at least 15 years now, from school to casual conversation as well as on TV.
Weird to not see mushrooms on this chart ; I've always assumed it was within the Umami spectrum
- It definitely is. Mushrooms are huge on umami. This chart is not very detailed.
- Chart kind of sucks. They article does talk about mushrooms being a major source.
Funny that the map includes garum, a food that hasn't been popular in a couple millennia
- Worcestershire sauce is sort of a descendant of it.
MSG,the coke of umami
- Uncle Roger likes this
  
  Fu yo!!
Isn't parmesan cheese also a source of Umami?
- Aged cheese are cited among the European sources of umami
Cod in Brazil rather than Portugal will make some people angry 🤣🤣
- I'm fuming, actually.
The proper english term is "savory".
Fish & Tomato & Cheese & Meat*
Tomatos are und umami? I am confused. For me they are more... sour?
- Tomatoes are sour to you? Definitely rich and earthy to me.
  
  I definitely think it depends on the state of your tomato. A store bought tomato has a more sour, acidic taste due to how they're harvested and ripen off the vine. If you get them more locally sourced, and they ripen on the vine longer, they definitely develope the flavors you've mentioned.
What tf happened to Spicy?
- Capsaicin doesn't interact with your taste buds, it reacts with your pain receptors. Spicy isn't a taste it's a "feeling"
- Spicy can be several things. I associate it mostly with chili heat (capsaicin fucking with your vanillin receptors for heat and pain) but people also call black pepper, onion and garlic spicy. They all have different "mechanisms of action". I have no idea why e.g. chili heat isn't considered a "taste", but apparently it's not.
  
  Wasabi is its own type of spicy too (apparently the same type as radishes!)
What's the British beef extract? I've never heard of such a thing. I know Marmite, though..
- Bovril, often consumed in liquid form at football matches, because this country's food food culture has come a long way, but still needs to remember it's roots
  
  Is that part of their "brown sauce" or whatever it is? I'm fairly inexperienced in British cuisine.
  
  Interesting. I've heard of drinking buillon, it used to be a thing around these parts.
- During the BSE scare, Bovril temporarily switched to a beef-free product. It was Marmite in a Bovril jar.
Deftig Herzhaft
- Das ist doch jedem bekannt.
  
  Was aber wohl unwahr ist, sind die Geschmackszonen auf der Zunge. Ich kann mich auch noch erinnern, wie die Klasse in der Schule etwas ungläubig war, die Lehrerin das aber als Fakt durchgesetzt hat.
Maybe it’s a west coast Canada thing I dunno, but people around me talk about umami when it’s context appropriate.

Oh, look, it’s in the fucking dictionary: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/umami

35 comments