h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I'm an umami sceptic. I don't believe it exists.

My mind is not closed on the matter, but the best descriptions I have to work on are "Oh, you know, that taste that steak and nuts both have?"

The problem is that, no, I don't know the taste that nuts, mushrooms, strawberries, rare steak and chips with salt have in common. They all taste completely different to me.

So, how is 'umami', if such a thing exists, different from saltiness?

It's the buzz that comes from eating mature cheese. Kinda spreads over your cheeks.

Glutamic acid. It's basically the natural version of MSG and there's quite a lot of it in kelp and seaweed, which are often used in Japanese cuisine.

Calling it 'umami' has, I suspect, more to do with wanting to seem cool than any real understanding of what it is. If something tastes nice I say that it tastes nice... I don't go around saying "cor, check out the umami on that!"

I do get the feeling it's more a texture than a taste.

No, it's definitely a taste.

The word translates as 'pleasant savoury flavour'.

So going by the responses so far, Id say the answer to your opening post is; 'no'

Awwww, and I didn't even get the tutorial about MSG and the seaweed from Japan, either.

Sorry, I did. I somehow just didn't see it. I'll get me coat.

I suppose the problem is that it's supposed to be a unique 'taste' so can't be compared to anything else. A bit like trying to describe vision in terms of sound and touch, to a person blind from birth. Well that's how I think of it anyway

Can anyone describe saltiness in a way that makes sense?

It is pretty clearly established that we have receptors which respond to salt and other, distinct receptors which respond to glutamate.

So, how is 'sweetness', if such a thing exists, different from saltiness?

the basic tastes are different because distinct receptors are involved in the distinct tastes, no matter how one describes them. I certainly couldn't describe 'saltiness' in terms other than 'it's salty'. Why would one imagine any of the other tastes to be susceptible to descriptions which 'make sense'?

That makes sense, anhaga.

It reminds me when I read oenologists' comments on wine. I can usually imagine pretty little from all those strange descriptions of taste -- the best way to understand them would be to go with someone who understands all that, taste wine with her, and so she could say every time: "this wine has the gunflint taste", "that wine has tannins" etc.

Surely there are plenty of things we cannot really describe in words other than by showing (in te loosest sense). How do you describe the sound of violin? The colour purple? The scent of nettles?

"Salty" makes sense because when I taste two salty things, I taste what they have in common.

Mushrooms, however, don't taste like marmite, beef or walnuts, and don't even have a lot of taste in common. Yet they're all supposed to be such great examples of 'umami' that you can even substitute them for each other in recipes.

I never heard that strawberries had umami in them, but for me, mushrooms, walnuts, marmite and Parmesan cheese all taste very similar, the similarity is I presume the umami taste.

Parmesan cheese has the highest amount of umami of anything in the western world, so you could just say "umami tastes like Parmesan". If you can identify a taste of Parmesan in walnuts or in marmite, then you've got it.

I suspect that I either have very sensitive or very insensitive taste buds. Either sensitive enough that I can detect lots of different flavours in all of these things which I'm told should taste similar, or insensitive enough that my taste buds just don't do umami.

That's possible.

""Salty" makes sense because when I taste two salty things, I taste what they have in common."


No. Salty makes sense because you've been trained to recognize it.

Salty ketchup flavoured crisps taste nothing like salty anchovies. Except the salt. We may conventionally associate the two things by the salt they have in common, but it doesn't have to be that way. We could associate ketchup crisps with bruschetta (tomatoes in common) or with chocolate cake (sweetness in common) and we could associate the anchovies' taste with the taste of fresh caught perch fillets dredged in flour and fried in butter over an open fire. And, we could associate things by their umami flavour, if we were in the habit of doing so.


Many Japanese speakers cannot distinguish between an English "r" and and English "l". Their ears physically respond to the distinct sounds just as ours do, but their brains have not been trained to distinguish them. Similarly, our taste receptors distinguish between the different flavours, but some of us have Engrish brains.

Go to a Chinses supermarket. Buy a bag of MSG. Open the bag. Stick your finge in your mouth. Stick your finger in the bag. Stick your finger in your mouth again. A viola - umami.

Also try making a stir fry with and without umami.

Or drink a properly-made dashi-based soup made with kombu, bonito flakes and the like.

Simply put 'umami' is 'savouriness', it's just (as I mentioned before) it's cooler to talk about umami.

Well, not exactly, because most western food has no umami in it whatsoever. There are plenty of things in our cuisine which could be described as savoury, but only a few of them have umami. Even then, it is only in tiny quantities. Only Parmesan has it in quantities matching that in Eastern food.