I’ve heard people say that it’s the feeling of “Satisfaction” while tasting something. It’s supposed to be present in a lot of unrelated foods like tomatoes, mushrooms, MSG, soy sauce, etc. How does a human “taste” Umami?
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Human tongues have taste buds that react to chemicals called glutamates and nucleotides, and these are often found in protein rich and fermented foods. So we taste umami the same way we taste other things like salty (our receptors react chemically with the salt ions), sweet (with various sugars) etc. A tiny bit of chemical binds to the receptor, which initiates a chemical reaction in the neuron, which ultimately sends a signal to the brain that says “umami/salty/sweet” (and most likely a combination of many things).
Umami is a taste, the same as salty or sweet or sour. While the story isn’t *quite* this simple, you can think of it as a fifth kind of taste bud. In the same way that “sweet” is the taste of sugar and “sour” is the taste of acidity, umami is the taste of glutamates and related molecules.
Subjectively, it’s a “meaty” flavor, one you’ll find in a lot of broths, many processed foods (if you see “hydrolyzed yeast” in a label, that’s what they’re adding), most fermented sauces (soy sauce among them), etc. These foods contain lots of glutamates that easily dissolve into your saliva. If you’ve ever tasted a bit of pure MSG, that’s as close as you’ll get to a pure umami flavor (MSG is also slightly salty, since it releases the same sodium ions that regular table salt does).
Umami is the fifth taste we have identified being tasted by the tounge. The word Umami have Japanese origin where it was first isolated but a better English word might be Savory. The Umami taste is caused by an ammino acid called glutamate which is one the ammino acids that forms proteins in human and many other animals and plants. So a lot of protein rich food taste a lot of Umami. You can also isolate the glutamate and bind it to sodium instead of in a protein chain forming Mono-Sodium Glutamate which is the pure form of Umami. This can be compared to pure sugar, salt or acid and can similarly be added to food to make it taste more savory.
To a 5yr old, Asians would explain it as a unique mix of smell you can taste in your mouth. And proceed to feed you stuff with that powerful flavor. If you don’t have a great Asian restaurant nearby, see if you can buy some dried octopus strips or Bonito flakes online.
it’s close to the addicting extra ompf you get from a good ramen, taste of shellfish, and bone broth.
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