Professor Kikunae Ikeda
Throughout history, human beings have created various seasonings and condiments to improve the palatability of food. Salt has been a familiar flavour-enhancer for thousands of years. Foods such as sugar and vinegar have also been known since ancient times. This is why we can all readily imagine sweet, sour and salty tastes.
Umami too is contained in a variety of foodstuffs, and is familiar to us from the taste of traditional foods such as soy sauce, miso and cheese. However, it is only around a century ago that umami was discovered as a basic taste, and monosodium glutamate invented and launched as an umami seasoning.
There were long thought to be just four basic tastes: sweet, sour, salty and bitter. Then a scientist in Japan, Professor Kikunae Ikeda of Tokyo Imperial University (now the University of Tokyo) noticed the presence of a taste that did not fit into any of these categories.
Professor Ikeda discovered the main taste component in kombu dashi (broth or stock) to be glutamate, and dubbing it “umami,” penned an academic paper explaining the existence of umami as one of the basic tastes.
Following in Professor Ikeda’s footsteps, other Japanese scientists discovered the umami substances inosinate and guanylate.