COOKING IN: Hugo Arnold searches for umami, the 'fifth taste', that makes good dishes great
A good steak has it; so does a piece of halibut. A good-quality chicken, roasted so the skin is caramelised and the flesh moist and succulent, has it. Pork, assuming it has not been bulked out with water, will also have it. The "it" referred to is umami, often described as "the fifth taste", and most easily described as meaty.
Confusingly, however, there are vegetables that tick this box, too: aubergine, particularly when grilled to a full-flavoured finish; tomatoes, if properly grown in earth (many no longer are); and mushrooms, which if they are good specimens, have it in spades, despite most now being intensively cultivated.
The flavour of many ingredients is not what it once was, and what we seem to be missing, in many cases, is the umami aspect. Strawberries exhibit sweetness, but sweetness by itself is dull and one-dimensional. Tomatoes can be acidic in a predictable way, with little other complexity. Beef can be praised these days because of its tenderness, even when lacking in flavour.
Our perception of flavour has traditionally been governed by four basic tastes: sweet, sour, salty and bitter. To these taste combinations, we assign memories, and from this we build our own profiles of likes and dislikes. So, in the south of India, for example, there is a preference for salty lassi, the refreshingly cool yoghurt drink. In the north of the country they prefer a sweetened version. Likewise, we find some foods overly-strong. Many dislike whole milk, for example, having grown used to the taste of skimmed and semi-skimmed versions.
Good chefs work with the four basic elements to highlight and heighten the fifth element. Hence a well-cooked - as opposed to a well-done - steak can deliver a big, meaty flavour. It might have been marinated; it is likely to have been properly aged, so it is dark-brown, instead of the supermarket-preferred rosy pink and moist. The seasoning will come not just from salt used before cooking, but also the subsequent seasoning and adjustments made when it has been allowed to rest. Delivering umami is crucial for that big-eat characteristic that prompts the memory to linger for longer.
Of course, it is not quite this simple. A great deal of our sense of taste is thought to come from our smell stimuli, which are influenced by hundreds of different elements. Add to that how food feels in the mouth, as well as the sound it makes, and the whole idea of something being tasty is more complex than we initially assume. The following recipes use umami-friendly influences such as bacon, anchovies, balsamic vinegar and alcohol, to enhance the meaty flavour.