UMAMI AND FLAVOR

Flavor is a complex perception, drawing together the senses of taste and smell, as well as mouth feel, which is the basic element of texture.

There are several striking and very appealing aromas or smells for which Japanese food is notable. Above all, they are associated with soups. The following ingredients—katsuobushi, yuzu, matsutake, and miso—produce some of the aromas or smells unique to Japanese food.

When katsuobushi, which is dried, smoked, and cured bonito, and a basic of the Japanese cuisine, is freshly shaved and made into stock, it gives off an intriguing, unforgettable, and highly complex aroma that is clearly related to the smoking, drying, and curing of fish. It is not a marine or fishy smell, but one in which oak smoke predominates.

Yuzu is the Japanese citron. For the most part, only the peel is used, as an aromatic (suikuchi), especially in clear soups, the stock for which would be made with katsuobushi and kelp (konbu). Clear soups are served in lidded bowls, which means that the delicate citrus aroma of the yuzu is concentrated under the lid and bursts forth in a stimulating way when the lid is removed.

Matsutake (Tricholoma matsutake, formerly Armillaria edodes) is a fungus with a striking phallic shape that is the cause of much ribaldry. These fungi grow in pine woods and are difficult to find. In the market they are very expensive. In Japanese Cooking: A Simple Art, Shizuo Tsuji writes of them: “Scented with the fragrance of piney woods, these mushrooms that grow only in the wild in undisturbed stands of red pine are so highly prized that they tend to be used as the main ingredient or the primary focus of a dish.” The aroma of matsutake is incomparable and is perhaps best appreciated in the Kyoto specialty called dobinmushi, in which matsutake is served in very delicate stock in little individual teapots. The aroma is held in the pot and bursts forth when the lid is lifted.

When the fermented-soybean paste known as miso is made into a soup with either katsuobushi or dried-sardine stock, it gives off a strongly savory, appetizing aroma highly reminiscent of roasting meat. This meaty savoriness is typical of fermented-soybean products and is to be attributed to the high quality and quantity of protein-forming amino acids that they contain.

Whereas yuzu and matsutake are known almost exclusively for their aromas, katsuobushi and miso, besides their characteristic smells, also have equally appealing tastes. Both are rich in what is called umami seibun, the “tastiness” factor, which is considered, above all in Japan, to be one of the primary tastes: sweet, sour, salty, bitter, and umami.

Western science has traditionally identified four basic tastes: sweet, sour, salty, and bitter, with appropriate taste receptors on different parts of the tongue, though the discreteness of the different receptors has now come into question. The Far East, on the other hand, has traditionally favored the notion of five basic tastes: sweet, sour, salty, bitter, and hot (pepper hot). These five have been referred to in Chinese literature from at least the third century B.C. However, in present-day Japan, the fifth one, hot, has been replaced by umami, which, it is argued, is one of the basic tastes, with its own taste receptors on the tongue. According to Japanese thinking hot joins “metallic” and “astringent” as one of the three tastes that stimulate the mucous membranes of the mouth as well as the taste buds.

Umami seibun (the tastiness factor) is identified quite specifically with certain amino acids and nucleotides, namely monosodium glutamate (MSG), sodium inosinate, and sodium guanylate. There is no question that, on the one hand, these three are important flavor enhancers and, on the other, have a powerful synergistic effect on each other, up to eight or nine times the properties of the single ingredients. What is hotly disputed, at least outside of Japan, is whether umami constitutes a basic taste. Opposing the concept of umami as a basic taste would mean opposing the Ajinomoto company, one of the world’s largest and most powerful food companies. That company was founded to market monosodium glutamate, which the company called Ajinomoto, “the foundation of taste.” The controversy is largely over theory. The practical details concerning these amino acids and nucleotides are, however, important and useful.

Monosodium glutamate is naturally present in many foods, but above all in kelp (konbu) and Parmesan cheese. Green tea is pretty high in monosodium glutamate and so is fresh tomato juice and many other foods. The list is seemingly endless.

Sodium inosinate is above all found in katsuobushi and in the little dried sardines (niboshi) that are used with kelp to make dashi stock. Since there is an eight or ninefold enhancement of flavor when these two are used together, it is obvious why stock made in this way should be so effective as the basis of soups, sauces, and dips. This combination also turns up very effectively in Worcestershire sauce and its Japanese derivatives. All this was discovered and put into practice long before anyone knew anything about amino acids.

Sodium guanylate is especially abundant in dried shiitake mushrooms, so it is reasonable, in the light of current knowledge, for vegetarians to use dried shiitake instead of katsuobushi for making stock. This is exactly what Buddhist vegetarians have traditionally done. Guanylate is found primarily in mushrooms, but there is also a little in beef, pork, and chicken.

In recent years there has been considerable controversy over the use of monosodium glutamate as a food additive, with the problem of the so-called Chinese-restaurant syndrome. The problem is not clearcut, and there are many factors to consider. Monosodium glutamate as an additive is not a natural derivative of kelp, but is made from sugar-beet molasses or glucose by a process of bacterial fermentation.

Whether this is significant is hard to know. At any rate, it is not a “natural” product. An important question is whether there are people who suffer from the monosodium glutamate that occurs naturally in so many foods. Such people would not only have to avoid Japanese soups and stocks, but also such things as soy sauce, which has its own naturally occurring monosodium glutamate.

Perhaps the important factor is the amount of the additive used. It seems clear that many Chinese chefs, especially at cheaper restaurants, are very heavy-handed with their MSG. It is interesting that no one ever complains about a Japanese-restaurant syndrome.

Certain it is that an enormous amount of MSG is used in Japan. As well as restaurant chefs, many housewives wouldn’t be without it. There are many products available in which an appropriate amount of MSG is combined with salt. The presence of salt effectively prevents one from overdoing the MSG. The Ajinomoto company even markets a superior combination, in which sodium inosinate is added in the correct amount for the full synergistic effect with the glutamate. The main ingredient, of course, is salt. If you are going to use these additives, this is certainly the best way to do so.

Whether glutamate, inosinate, and guanylate, as the “umami factor,” comprise the fifth basic taste, or whether they should be considered primarily as flavor enhancers, is a theoretical question. The fact is that they do behave as very effective flavor enhancers when used in small amounts and correct proportions.

As for the other tastes, salt and sugar as sweetness par excellence are used as flavor enhancers in Japanese cuisine. Salt, apart from anything else, is essential to the human body. The Japanese diet used to be far too salty, but of late the role of salt as a flavor enhancer has been encroached on by sugar to the extent that virtually all prepared foods sold in supermarkets and convenience stores have at least a little sugar in them, often a lot.

Sour is not a big taste factor in Japanese cuisine, and salt pickles are far more widespread than vinegar pickles. Japanese rice vinegar, as the representative of sour, is very delicate, the best of all being that made from unpolished glutinous rice (genmai mochigome su). Sweetened vinegar is used very effectively as a light dressing for such vegetables as cucumber.

Bitter is a very restricted taste anywhere in the world, since it is not a taste humans take to naturally and is generally associated with medicine. In Japan the traditionally eaten guts of some fish and shellfish have a certain bitterness, but in general there is a strong tendency to shun the bitter taste. Such foreign things as bitter chocolate and bitter lemon soft drink have never become popular in Japan, yet other bitter drinks such as beer, whisky, and coffee have all become extremely popular. Chocolate in Japan is another example of the general tendency to sweetness, and avoidance of the bitter, with plain (bitter) chocolate not being at all popular and milk chocolate being far sweeter than would be usual in Western countries.

Japanese food has a reputation for being rather bland, yet despite “pepper” hot not being a major taste factor, it certainly has an important place. Wasabi, which is very pungent, is very highly regarded. It is mixed into the dip for sashimi, is an essential ingredient of nigirizushi, and has many other uses. Chili pepper is the major ingredient of the seven-spice mixture called shichimi tōgarashi, tōgarashi being the Japanese word for chili pepper.

This mixture is sprinkled on noodles and various other dishes. Then there is sanshō, Japanese pepper, the seedpods of the prickly ash. It is also used in the seven-spice mixture. Curry too, as served in the popular karē raisu, can sometimes be hot.

As for the “metallic “astringent” tastes, they are not really a factor in food.

By Richard Hosking in " A Dicionary of Japanese Food", Tuttle Publishing (an imprint of Periplus Editions (HK) Ltd., 1995, excerpts pp.185-190. Digitized, adapted and illustrated to be posted by Leopoldo Costa.

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