| But though umami can make a food taste "meaty", meat is only one of the many sources of __glutamate__. (...) Ripe tomatoes, dried mushrooms, Parmesan cheese, cured anchovies, and a great many fermented foods (including soy sauce and miso paste) contain high levels of glutamte (...) A bit like salt, glutamate seems to italicize the taste of foods, but, unlike salt, it doens't have an instantly recognizable taste of its own. (...) It's possible that the umami chemicals activate not only the sense of taste in our mouths, but also trip the sense of touch as well, creating an illusion of "body". | But though umami can make a food taste "meaty", meat is only one of the many sources of __glutamate__. (...) Ripe tomatoes, dried mushrooms, Parmesan cheese, cured anchovies, and a great many fermented foods (including soy sauce and miso paste) contain high levels of glutamte (...) A bit like salt, glutamate seems to italicize the taste of foods, but, unlike salt, it doens't have an instantly recognizable taste of its own. (...) It's possible that the umami chemicals activate not only the sense of taste in our mouths, but also trip the sense of touch as well, creating an illusion of "body". |
| | (...) __dashi__, the classic Japanese stock (...) a cooking water designed, albeit unwittingly, to contain as much umami and as little of anything else as possible (...) made from dried seaweed, shavings from a cured fish, and optionally, a dried mushroom or two. But it so happens that each of those items contains a different one of the three principal umami chemicals. Put all three in water and you get synergies that vastly amplify the umami effects. |
nik