Scientists Say: Umami

This is one of the five tastes, and is often compared to broth or meat

The soy sauce you put on your sushi contains a lot of monosodium glutamate, a chemical associated with the flavor known as umami.

Thomas Hawk/Flickr/(CC BY-NC 2.0)

By Bethany Brookshire

December 21, 2015 at 7:00 am

Umami (noun, “Oo-MAH-mee”)

This is one of the five major tastes. The others are sweet, salty, sour and bitter. Umami comes from the Japanese words for “delicious” and “taste.” Many people say it tastes “meaty” or “brothy.” People taste umami when foods turn on receptors on your tongue for glutamate. It’s an amino acid that is part of many proteins.

In a sentence

Many animals love the taste of umami, but penguins can’t taste it at all.

Follow Eureka! Lab on Twitter

Power Words

(for more about Power Words, click here)

amino acids Simple molecules that occur naturally in plant and animal tissues and that are the basic constituents of proteins.

glutamate A salt of glutamic acid. Glutamate plays an important role in the brain as a signaling molecule between cells.

glutamic acid A non-essential amino acid that helps make up proteins.

umami One of the five major tastes (along with sweet, sour, salty and bitter). It has been described as savory but most people find the mild flavor hard to characterize. It is particularly prized as a flavor in Japanese cuisines.