BROWN THOMAS and two Irish distributors are vying to be the first to bring shiny tubes of what is being touted as a miracle food ingredient, Taste No 5, to our stores in quick-time. Taste what? Everyone’s familiar with sweet, sour, bitter and salty, but words to describe that elusive fifth taste are vague. Yumminess, deliciousness, savouriness and more-ishness are often used, but “umami”, a term invented in 1909 by a Japanese chemist, Kikunae Ikeda, to explain the appeal of soy sauce and seaweed, is now the fifth taste’s accepted name.
Laura Santtini caused a culinary sensation with her launch this week of umami in a tube costing £2.99 – “Taste No 5” – and says that one squirt gives instant “food mojo”. The managing director of Waitrose, the first supermarket to stock it, told The Irish Times yesterday that ever since his board tasted the paste, they’ve been “squeezing into everything”.
The ingredients – tomatoes, anchovies, porcini mushrooms, black olives, parmesan, balsamic vinegar, olive oil, sugar and salt – all contain naturally occurring glutamate that trigger a craving response because our tongues have glutamate receptors.
Irish Times food writer Domini Kemp says Taste No 5 “sounds like MSG-lite” and a bit like cheating. And that’s fine with Santtini, a cookery book author and owner of an Italian restaurant in London. She says her aim is to make time-pressed “good cooks into great cooks” instantly by having in a tube all the glutamate-containing ingredients they would otherwise need in their food cupboard to create “umami”.
Kemp, who once advised Irish Timesreaders to add a parmesan rind and soy sauce to make a very umami-ish Bolognese sauce, says that in stews she often uses a dash of Worcestershire sauce (which contains anchovies), anchovy essence or Marmite (yeast extract) to achieve that rich dark umami taste, making use of their natural glutamates, which trigger a craving response. "But I can't see myself using Taste No 5, I would be suspicious that it would create an instant effect without any substance."
Hugo Arnold, Irish Timesfood columnist, says that getting the "umami" effect takes time to produce with natural ingredients and doubts that anything that comes in a tube could reproduce it. In fact, Santtini does not yet use Taste No 5 in her own restaurant, preferring the traditional Italian method of umami-rich dishes.
Glutamates also have an unfortunate history. In 1909, Ikeda patented a way of crystallising glutamates into MSG (monosodium glutamate). MSG was liberally sprinkled on foods by food manufacturers, homecooks, chefs and restaurants alike until, in 1968, a US doctor claimed that MSG caused “Chinese Restaurant Syndrome”, heart palpitations caused by overdosing on a Chinese takeaway. The ensuing 1970s foodscare was debunked, but fear of MSG, which is safe in small doses, has endured.
A cheap way that food manufacturers have replaced the effect of glutamates is by using yeast extract, which contains natural glutamate, says Dr Kieran Kilcawley, principal research officer with Teagasc and an expert in flavour chemistry. “Anchovy paste would do the same thing.”
Kieran Glennon, head chef at the two- Michelin star Patrick Guilbaud, says that he produces umami by putting Worcestershire sauce in a meat ragout, or using parmesan in his truffle tortellinis. He’s open to trying Taste No 5: “Everything is worth trying, but I can’t see myself spreading it all over the fish in the restaurant.” But at the Gordon Ramsey restaurant at the Powerscourt and at the Ritz Carlton, chef de cuisine Jonathan MacIver says he will not be using it.
