e all remember the elementary school science lesson about sweet, sour, salty and bitter tastes and, until recently, there were only four identified tastes (so don't start thinking that your science teacher didn't do her homework!). However, a scientist in Japan actually identified and named umami - the "fifth" taste - about 100 years ago, hence the Japanese-sounding name, which translates to mean "delicious essence." Umami has been kept a secret for quite some time, but in the 1980s, several studies confirmed that umami was indeed the fifth taste. The fifth taste is subtle, but can best be described as savory. The important thing to know, though, is that understanding umami can help make you a better cook, since umami's essential role is to enhance flavor.

Three of the most familiar umami foods are tomatoes, soy sauce and Parmigiano Reggiano cheese. If an umami food is paired with a sweet or salty food, it will magnify and round out the sweetness or saltiness - think about how a sprinkling of Parmigiano Reggiano cheese enhances your spaghetti marinara. If umami is paired with a sour or bitter food, it will mute those unpleasant flavors - think about Asian cooking where bitter greens like cabbage and bok choy are cooked with soy sauce to quiet the bitter taste and enhance the overall flavor of the dish.

Umami really magnifies the taste of savory foods by extending the amount of time the flavors linger on your tongue. Think about how the richness of a steak eaten with sautéed onions lingers in your mouth after you have swallowed. Another great way to understand how umami works is to think about drinking an earthy, bold red wine (wine contains umami). If you drink it while eating a sweet food, like a fruity dessert, the sweetness in the dessert will bring out the bitterness in the wine and cancel any sweetness that existed. Yuck. On the other hand, if you drink the wine while eating cheese, which contains salty and astringent elements, the taste of both the cheese and the wine will be greatly enhanced by the pairing and the sweetness in the wine will be magnified.

Umami foods are naturally rich in the amino acid glutamate (Monosodium Glutamate, or MSG, was the first artificial umami flavor). The savory flavor of umami is that of the isolated amino acid glutamine, which you can see and taste distinctly in a wedge of parmesan cheese. Those white crystals covering the cheese are actually the glutamate that has formed in the aging process and they contain the umami taste that gives the cheese its unique flavor. The processes of aging, curing and fermenting, in fact, bring out the umami in foods (prosciutto, cheese and balsamic vinegar are good examples of this). Many people cannot identify the taste of umami on its own, but that is not a problem as long as the person doing the cooking understands and applies the principles of using the different taste combinations to enhance the flavor of what they are cooking. To help you put umami to use, I have compiled a list of umami-containing foods. Use them in combination with one another or use them to help enhance or mute the other four tastes in whatever foods you prepare. Who knows, with the help of umami, you may even learn to love a previously hated bitter vegetable! Bon Appétit-or should I say Umami?

Vegetables Asparagus Carrots Chinese cabbage Enoki mushrooms Olives Onions Porcini mushrooms Potatoes Seaweed Shiitake mushrooms Soy beans Sweet potatoes Tomatoes Truffles

Condiments and Seasonings Anchovy paste Balsamic vinegar Bouillon Fish sauce Ketchup Miso Oyster sauce Soy sauce Tomato paste Tomato sauce Worcestershire sauce

Protein-Rich Foods Bacon Beef Bonito Flakes Chicken Clams Cod Cured ham Cured Salami Mackerel Other cheeses Oysters Parmigiano Reggiano cheese Pork Sardines Scallops