0259 Umami

The four basic tastes: salty, sweet, sour and bitter were good enough for Democritus, Plato and Aristotle but not, apparently, for Escoffier in France or Kikunae Ikeda in Japan. Ikeda was a chemist who identified a fifth flavor found in kombu, a kind of seaweed, and which he called umami which is Japanese for “yummy.” But scientists scoffed: this fifth flavor, they said, didn’t exist; it was all in people’s heads. Ikeda proved them wrong. Through chemical analysis, Ikeda discovered glutamic acid. He then went on to patent monosodium glutamate to give non-umami foods the umami mojo. But it also gave headaches. And so, ironically, Ikeda ushered in the era of asking it to be left out of food altogether. Umami mia! #ceas #hacker #japan