I saw a wine column that said besides the classic tastes of salt sweet sour and bitter that there is an extra one for MSG. I haven’t had anything with MSG since the 60s, and even then it was just an acronym with no flavor associated with it.
Where is this sense on the tongue, and what natural foods is it associated with?
You sure about that? MSG is a base component in a lot of different foods. Unless you’ve taken the time to research what foods don’t include it, you probably eat it a lot more than you think. If you’ve eaten canned soup, most frozen food, or snack foods like potato chips since the 60s, you’ve probably eaten MSG.
Umami is name of the flavor that is associated with MSG. It’s generally described as a “meaty” or “fuller” taste. Contrary to popular opinion, studies on MSG have not proven it to be harmful in any way.
From Wiki:
And a 6th taste:
and
IIRC, one code name for MSG is “hydrolyzed vegetable protein.”
Hmmm. I did a search and found that indeed that’s one of many aliases.
“MSG - The Slow
Poisoning Of America
MSG Hides Behind 25+ Names, Such As ‘Natural Flavouring’
MSG Is Also In Your Favorite Coffee Shops And Drive-Ups”
I think I read that some people find straight MSG sweet. I guess it depends on what’s in their saliva, wouldn’t it? with MSG just amplifying it?
Also, I understand that boiling most proteins will yield some MSG. And that gelatin has a ton of the stuff. Anyone can confirm these two?
Cite? That doesn’t make much sense… Glutamate and sugars are structurally very different. I’d be surprised if this were true.
This is true, but my guess is that any process rendering edible food won’t hydrolyze proteins very much. It requires a good amount of heat, or the presence of an acid or base, and even then a lot of animal proteins are stable enough that they don’t break down entirely during cooking. Still, since glutamate is a common enough part of a protein, you’ll probably be releasing some amount of free glutamate when cooking most proteins. Gelatin is essentially protein; I can’t say what the glutamate content is though.
FWIW, Sun Tzu (China, 4th c. BCE) says there are five flavors, but doesn’t name them.
Sweet, salty, sour, bitter, and hot (think chili and hot peppers).
Ooo, Mommy, this tastes meaty!
In my mind, there are at least seven flavors – the five indicated plus chili “stinging hot” and mustard “sinus-clearing hot” – two very different sensations.
It’s my understanding that there are four (or five) types of taste receptors on the tongue, and that the two “tastes” you mention are really just chemicals that “shock” all taste buds equally. Something about the capsaicin or something being able to bind, imperfectly, to all the receptors that usually only bind with one kind of chemical. I’ll let those who actually know what I’m talking about (I don’t really) elaborate.
By the way, here’s the Straight Dope article on umami.
sorry I never got back to this. I just couldn’t find the thread! (being new with a ton of catch up and still unfamiliar with the organization of the forum).
It was in some pop magazine (most likely Newsweek or Wired since they are my most regular reads). The way it sounded was that MSG just amplified flavours instead of having a taste of its own. That meant that was people thought MSG tasted like was more of a reflection of their oral hygiene than anything else. :dubious:
Is this true? How does MSG actually work?
Aspartame is a dipeptide which is a sciency way of saying ‘baby protein’ since proteins are polypeptides. Glutimate is an amino acid, too.
I see MSG most often listed as monosodium glutimate. It is naturally occuring in all living organisms since it is necessary for the production of proteins and enzymes necessary for life. There is little evidence that MSG can cause the illnesses most often blamed on it and most, if not all of the symptoms can be explained by the sodium, not the glutimate or the combination.
I was taught that umami was most closely linked to ‘savory’ but it is very hard to isolate umami from other flavors. Many westerners can’t tell the difference between savory and salty.
“Hot like chili” doesn’t seem right to me; aren’t peppers native to the Americas? If Sun Tzu did say “hot” he might have been talking about mustard or wasabi, which are not at all like chili.
Or maybe curry?
Curry is a spice mixture (or more properly, a class of spice mixtures). The hotness in curry comes from chile peppers. I suppose it’s possible that in pre-Columbian times there were curry mixtures that relied on other spices (like black pepper) for heat.
Also, I don’t know that I’d consider the spiciness of chili peppers a flavor in the same category as sweetness, sourness, saltiness and bitterness. The spiciness of chilies is a pain sensation - capsaicins (the chemicals that cause hotness in chilies) cause a similar burning sensation when applied to other parts of the body (the eyes, for example). The last four flavors are detectable only by the taste buds - you can’t detect the sweetness of sugar water (for example) if you get it in your eyes.
Capsasian occurs purely a new world plant. Most people don’t realise that the spicy cuisines of India, South East Asia and Sichuan have all come about in the last 400 years. Sun Tzu was probably referring to Sichuan peppercorn if anything.
Which is a weird taste sensation in and of itself–I’ve never tasted another food like it. Sichuan peppercorns are not hot or spicy at all. They don’t taste like peppers or chilis. Instead, they have a numbing, tingling flavor. By numbing, I mean sort of like getting hit with a low dose of Novocaine. The tingle of sichuan peppers combined with the heat of chiles is called ma la (“numb and spicy hot”) and is common in Sichuan cuisine.