What Is Umami, and Which Jars Have the Most
Umami has become a compliment for anything that tastes deep, and along the way it lost its edges. It has a precise meaning. It is the taste of one amino acid, glutamate, when that glutamate is free in a food rather than locked inside a protein, together with two nucleotides, inosinate and guanylate, that make the same glutamate taste several times stronger. Because it is a molecule, it can be measured, and the measurements rank the shelf in an order most people would not guess. This page explains the chemistry, answers the MSG question in the regulator's own words, and ranks the pantry twice: by concentration, and by what a normal spoonful puts on the plate. Our anchovy guide and dried mushroom guide cover the two jars that do most of this work.
What umami is
In 1908 Kikunae Ikeda, a chemistry professor at Tokyo Imperial University, set out to find what gave kombu broth its taste, and isolated glutamic acid from the seaweed. In the paper he published the following year he wrote that the taste was most characteristic of broth prepared from dried bonito and seaweed, and proposed to call it umami for convenience. He was not being poetic. He argued it was a fifth basic taste, separate from sweet, sour, salty and bitter, and he was right, though it took most of a century for the receptor to be found. In 2002 a team led by Charles Zuker showed that two proteins on the tongue, T1R1 and T1R3, pair up to form a receptor that responds to glutamate and to other amino acids, and that the response is sharply amplified by inosinate. That is the molecular fact under everything else on this page.
The word free matters. Every protein you eat contains glutamic acid, but bound up in a chain it has no taste. Fermentation, curing, ripening, drying and long cooking break proteins apart and release the glutamate, which is why a young cheese has little umami and a long-aged Parmesan has a great deal, why a fresh anchovy is a fish and a salt-cured anchovy is a seasoning, and why a tomato dried in the sun carries, weight for weight, several times the free glutamate of one picked that morning.
The three molecules, and why pairing them matters
Glutamate is the main one. The other two are nucleotides: inosinate, discovered in dried bonito by Shintaro Kodama in 1913, and guanylate, identified in dried shiitake by Akira Kuninaka in 1957. Neither tastes of much alone. Their job is multiplication. When glutamate and inosinate are present in equal amounts, the umami intensity is measured at roughly seven to eight times what either produces by itself. That one number explains much of the world's cooking. Dashi is kombu (glutamate) plus katsuobushi (inosinate). A Bolognese is Parmesan and tomato (glutamate) plus meat (inosinate). Anchovies dissolved into a tomato sauce are the same trick with a tin. If a dish tastes flat and salt does not fix it, the missing half is usually one of these two families, and the pairing table further down is the shortcut.
Is umami just MSG?
MSG is monosodium glutamate, a salt of the same molecule. The FDA's position is that the glutamate in MSG is chemically the same as the free glutamate that occurs naturally in tomatoes and cheese, and that adding MSG to food is generally recognized as safe. The agency also notes that adults take in about 13 grams of glutamate a day from the protein in ordinary food against about half a gram from added MSG, and that a typical serving of a food with added MSG contains under half a gram. Reported sensitivities exist, but the agency says researchers have not been able to trigger reactions consistently in controlled tests. Two labeling rules follow: added MSG must be listed by name in the ingredients, and a product that contains a natural glutamate source such as hydrolyzed protein or yeast extract cannot claim No MSG or No added MSG on the package. The honest answer, then, is that a wedge of Parmesan and a shaker of MSG deliver the same taste molecule. The cheese also delivers fat, salt, aroma and two years of cave, which is what you are paying for.
Which jars have the most, per 100 grams
The Umami Information Center, a Tokyo nonprofit, publishes measured free glutamate and nucleotide values for foods. These are the pantry entries, ranked by glutamate, in milligrams per 100 grams.
| Jar or ingredient | Free glutamate (mg/100 g) | Nucleotide (mg/100 g) | Where it comes from |
|---|---|---|---|
| Kombu, dried | 1,260 to 3,380 by variety (ma kombu 1,610 to 3,050) | None | The seaweed stores glutamate; Ikeda's original source |
| Parmigiano Reggiano | 1,200 to 1,680 | None | A year or more of ripening breaks casein into free amino acids |
| Soy sauce | 400 to 1,700 | None | Koji and months of brine fermentation dismantle soybean protein |
| Dried shiitake | 1,060 | Guanylate 150 | Drying concentrates glutamate and forms guanylate |
| Sun-dried tomatoes | 650 to 1,140 | Trace inosinate | Water leaves, glutamate stays; fresh tomato is 150 to 250 |
| Fish sauce (nam pla; colatura is the Italian form) | 950 | Not tabulated | Anchovies and salt, months to a year or more in the barrel |
| Oyster sauce | 900 | Not tabulated | Reduced oyster extract |
| Salt-cured anchovies | 630 | Guanylate 0; inosinate not tabulated | Months in salt, then oil |
| Miso | 200 to 700 | None | Koji fermentation of soybeans |
| Dry-cured ham | 340 | Not tabulated | Long curing frees amino acids in the muscle |
| Katsuobushi (dried bonito) | 30 to 40 | Inosinate 470 to 700 | The nucleotide jar; almost no glutamate of its own |
Two things the table does not include. Mushroom garum, the koji-fermented mushroom sauce from Noma Projects, is not in the reference tables. It is made by the same protein-to-amino-acid route as soy sauce and fish sauce, which is why it tastes the way it does, but we do not have a measured figure and will not invent one. Porcini are not tabulated either; the dried mushroom figures above are for shiitake, and dried mushrooms as a class are the guanylate source on a shelf.
Which jars have the most, per spoonful
Concentration is not dose. Nobody eats 100 grams of kombu or drinks a cup of soy sauce. Reworking the same figures at the quantities a cook uses reorders the list, and shows why a couple of anchovy fillets do nearly as much for a sauce as a tablespoon of grated cheese. The weights are our approximations of ordinary servings; the arithmetic is ours.
| Jar | A normal dose | Approximate weight | Free glutamate delivered |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fresh tomato | One medium tomato | 100 g | 150 to 250 mg |
| Kombu | One 4 inch strip | 5 g | 80 to 150 mg (ma kombu) |
| Sun-dried tomatoes | Two halves | 10 g | 65 to 115 mg |
| Dried shiitake | Three or four caps | 10 g | 105 mg, plus 15 mg guanylate |
| Dry-cured ham | One generous slice | 30 g | 100 mg |
| Soy sauce | One teaspoon | 6 g | 25 to 100 mg |
| Parmesan | One tablespoon, grated | 5 g | 60 to 85 mg |
| Fish sauce or colatura | One teaspoon | 6 g | About 55 mg |
| Anchovies | Two fillets | 8 g | About 50 mg |
| Miso | One tablespoon | 17 g | 35 to 120 mg |
| Katsuobushi | One loose handful | 5 g | 2 mg glutamate, 25 to 35 mg inosinate |
Read the two tables together and the practical rule falls out. A whole fresh tomato outdelivers a teaspoon of the strongest soy sauce, because you eat a great deal more of it. Kombu is the most concentrated thing on the shelf and still needs a proper strip and a soak to hand over its glutamate. And the katsuobushi line, near the bottom of both tables on glutamate, is the most important entry on the page, because its 25 to 35 milligrams of inosinate is what makes every other line taste seven times louder.
Pairing the shelf
The synergy only works across the two families, so a useful pantry keeps at least one jar from each column and uses them together.
| Glutamate jar | Nucleotide partner | The dish it already lives in |
|---|---|---|
| Kombu | Katsuobushi | Dashi |
| Tomato, fresh or dried | Anchovy, or ground meat | Puttanesca, ragù |
| Parmesan | Cured pork, dried porcini | Risotto, carbonara |
| Soy sauce or mushroom garum | Dried shiitake, or a piece of meat or fish | Braises, brothy beans, a pan sauce |
| Miso | Bonito, dried mushroom | Miso soup |
Anchovies are the odd jar out because they can sit in both columns. Fish muscle carries inosinate as well as the glutamate the salt frees, and although the reference tables do not measure how much survives the cure, two fillets melted into a pan will often rescue a sauce that a spoon of cheese cannot. The mushroom garum guide and the brothy beans guide show the vegetarian version of the same pairing.
Short answers to the rest
Is umami the same as salty? No. Salt is sodium chloride on one receptor; umami is glutamate on another. Soy sauce and anchovies are salty and umami at once, which is why a little of either replaces some salt. Does cooking make more of it? Long cooking, drying and aging do, because they break protein into free glutamate; a dried tomato has four to five times the glutamate of a fresh one by weight, and a ripened cheese far more than a young one. Quick cooking does not change much. Can a dish have too much? Yes; past a point it tastes heavy and flat rather than deeper, and acid is the correction, as our piece on acid argues. Is umami a taste or a flavor? A taste, in the strict sense, with its own receptor; flavor is taste plus aroma, and most umami jars bring aroma too. Does browning add umami? Browning adds hundreds of aroma compounds and some bitterness; it is a different chemistry, covered in the browning piece, and the two together are what a seared steak with soy in the pan tastes like.
The jars in these tables ship nationwide from theambrosianpantry.com: Yugeta double-brewed shoyu (shop Yugeta double-brewed shoyu), IASA colatura di alici (shop IASA colatura di alici), Noma Projects mushroom garum (shop Noma Projects mushroom garum), Les Mouettes d'Arvor anchovies (shop Les Mouettes d'Arvor anchovies), Matoba Suisan karebushi (shop Matoba Suisan karebushi), Wine Forest dried porcini (shop Wine Forest dried porcini) and Masseria Mirogallo sun-dried tomatoes (shop Masseria Mirogallo sun-dried tomatoes). Anyone in the shop can ask staff which two to open together first.
Sources & Further Reading
- Ikeda, K. New Seasonings. Chemical Senses 27(9): 847 to 849, 2002 (English translation of the 1909 paper)
- Nelson, G. et al. An amino-acid taste receptor. Nature 416, 2002 (T1R1 and T1R3, inosinate enhancement)
- Umami Information Center: umami-rich foods, measured glutamate, inosinate and guanylate content
- Umami Information Center: what is umami, the synergistic effect, the 1908, 1913 and 1957 discoveries
- U.S. Food and Drug Administration: Questions and Answers on Monosodium Glutamate (MSG)
- The Pantry Dispatch: Anchovies, The Complete Guide
- The Pantry Dispatch: Dried Mushrooms, The Complete Guide
- Noma Projects and Mushroom Garum guide
