Photo by Laurie Proffitt
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The Fifth Flavor: Umami
After sweet, sour, salty and bitter, comes Umami. And it may change the way you think and the way you drink - that is, if there is such a thing as umami. Who knows? The Swami knows. By Nancy Ross Ryan
"Ooo mah me," says Doug Frost, patiently sounding out the word that I've just recently heard and don't begin to understand. He describes umami as the fifth flavor, after sweet, sour, salty and bitter. But, just what is that fifth flavor, does it really exist, who discovered it, and what on earth does it mean?
I listen respectfully because Doug Frost is no lightweight. He's a master sommelier, one of 95 in the whole world, and also a master of wine, one of 280 worldwide. And as for carrying both titles? He is one of three people in the world who are both.
He says, first, that umami helps him match the wine and the person - not the wine and the food. "I no longer have to tell people 'you are not supposed to drink this wine with that dish.'" He says he is "frustrated with people in my industry who say there's some perfect food and wine match." (Frost writes and lectures about wine and spirits and consults to the restaurant industry. He started working in the restaurant industry at the age of 15, so he knows how restaurants and often-condescending sommeliers work.) He tends to consider food and wine together and he believes that good chefs do that too, that for them it's instinctive. And he says that umami gives them a chance to understand why some combinations work better. "It quickens their work in the kitchen," he says. (Notice we still haven't quite gotten to what umami is or means. Work with me here, for heaven knows I'm working hard at understanding it myself.) And then he comes up with a concrete example, "Suppose I have a very intense wine, a big Cabernet. But the dish the customer orders is not very intense. Say it's a delicate grilled fish. But the customer clearly wants this bottle of wine. I'm not about to say, 'No. That's a terrible match.' I can add some salt - and some lemon - to elevate the flavor of the dish and make the wine and the food mesh." Then Frost supplies a second example. If a customer really wants to drink a riesling and really wants to eat a steak, chances are that it will be a good match, but we are wary because we have been indoctrinated with the red meat-red wine dictum. But if the wine indeed does seem weak, not strong enough to stand up to the meat, try the old Tuscan trick of salting the steak and squeezing fresh lemon on it.
Where did umami come from, I want to know. "Although the concept of umami has been kicked around vocally in Japan for about 120 years, and it goes all the way back to a 3,000-year-old Chinese book, the "Yellow Emperor's" book of internal medicine, that defined everything in five groups - five seasons, five flavors - it has shown up on Western radar screens only in about the last 20 years. It is still very new here," says Frost. He admits that many chefs still question its validity, and culinary schools aren't really approaching it with an eye to a systematic study, much less teaching it in curriculum. But he personally believes that umami offers "a new way of observing how we enjoy food and alcoholic beverages."
"But is umami really the 'fifth flavor'"? I persist. "Well," he says, "When we talk about flavor - I don't think the word serves us very well. It's as if sweet, sour, salty and bitter is how we gauge any food we put in our mouths. But any kid knows that if you can't smell it, you can't taste it. Aroma is an important element. Umami," he says, (finally) "can be described as intensity, what helps us determine whether we like something or not, and carries a whole constellation of physical reactions. For example," he says (at last), "Tim Hanni uses this one: When you take raw green beans and you steam them, at some point in the cooking process, they stop being pulpy and somewhat bitter and start being sweet. At that point, you have created umami. You have changed the structure of glutamic acids - not necessarily increased the sugars - and the green beans now taste sweet and good. Tim is convinced that there are just five flavors, umami being the fifth. My argument with him is that there are at least seven or eight flavors and that aroma is of key importance and..."
"Whoa, wait!" I almost shout. "Who is Tim?"
"Oh," Frost says as if everyone knows, "Tim Hanni. He's the Swami of Umami."
So, I'm off to call the Swami, the wonderful Swami of Umami. I reach him at his Napa, California firm WineQuest, Inc., which offers a variety of services to wine professionals, retailers, restaurateurs, distributors, importers and consumers - everything from education and training, seminars, tastings, and reference systems to wine "camps" (sounds like fun). Hanni is also a master of wine. (In case you are wondering, as I was, what makes you a master of wine or master sommelier, you have to pass an official test for both, based, devised and administered in London, England. The pass rate is between 2% to 3%.)
Umami turns out to be just a fringe benefit in his mission to save the world from wine snobbery. WineQuest exists "To promote the unconditional enjoyment of wine, and that means no condition that you have to be 'educated' or sophisticated. It is completely dedicated to the abolishment of the wine and food nonsense that has so overtaken our entire culture of wine."
Hanni believes there is a difference between taste and flavor. "First of all you have to have a clarification of terms. These are really simple terms but even at the highest level of wine and food expertise, few people have really bothered to define them, and this leads to a complete inability for people in the wine and food arena to communicate about wine and food." According to Hanni, taste is a primary physiological sensation and according to current wisdom there are four tastes: sour, salty, bitter and sweet. And Hanni adds, "good old umami" making five. Flavor, says Hanni, is a combination of taste, smell, touch and other psychological elements - such as a combination of smell sensations that trigger an emotional or psychological association. What happens with flavor and that failure-to-communicate thing is this: "A person, who is a wine expert, gets a combination of smell sensations from a wine that trigger an emotional or psychological association. He now shares this with everybody - 'Wet fur! Don't you smell this, too?' - and this creates some very unreasonable expectations that everybody else will smell the same thing. Or else, sometimes in wine you find a very specific and identical chemical compound that is shared with pepper or butter or vanilla. But what happens? In the first case, we don't share the expert's psychological associations. In the second, our basic sensory knowledge is weak. So we nod our head and say, 'oh, yeah' because we want to appear expert. Or we just quit trying because the whole thing sounds so impossible."
"So please," I say, feeling a little bit like Oliver Twist asking for more, "Could I have some more about umami?"
"It means the good taste of food," he says, describing this as closely allied to monosodium glutamate and ribonucleotides, products of bacterial or enzymatic action that occur in all living organisms either through natural ripening or through cooking, curing, smoking or fermentation. (And because many antennae will go up at the mere mention of monosodium glutamate, I refer back to Doug Frost who says, "Get past that hurdle. There's not a shred of evidence that identifies msg as an allergen carrier.") Back to Umami, says Hanni, "It's the foods typically high in these compounds that we love - Parmesan cheese, mushrooms, and ripe tomatoes, for example. And," he says, "umami in many ways is best defined by those foods that do not have it, for example, plain tofu."
So Hanni has devised a new kind of wine list. Wines are listed according to their basic flavors - such as light-, medium- and full-bodied, sweet, fruity, dry and tannic - instead of by their traditional geographic and varietal designations. And based on the flavors of the wine that you personally prefer, the chef and even you, can make any food you like go with them.
Here are somewine-and-food balancing principles to mull over:
Here's a Hanni trick for Doubting Thomases: Take a sip of a strong wine, taste and swallow. Now put some salt and a squeeze of lemon on the back of your hand. Taste the salt-lemon mixture. Now taste the wine again. The wine will taste milder.
Here are someof Hanni's food-and-wine tricks:
Hanni warns that some ingredients can make a wine go either way, so be cautious of tomato products, onions, leeks, barbecue sauce, Worcestershire sauce, demi-glace and reduced stocks, anchovies, fish sauce, bacon, ham, asparagus and artichokes. Instructions: taste the dish with a strong wine and you will know how to season. Questions? Bug him (not me) at his website, www.winequest.com.
What if you are not cooking at home for guests using this newfound food-and-wine-match wisdom, but dining at a restaurant. My advice, ask the waiter if the chef knows "umami." If the waiter looks blank or if he says, "Oh yes, as a matter of fact, he's a fourth-degree black belt in that martial art," your course is clear. Simply order the wine you really like and the food you really like, then ask for the vinegar, the hoisin, the hot sauce or the soy sauce to bring it into balance. Bon appétit! And umami.
Doug Frost: 816-363-3029 |
GOURMET ISSUE - May 2000