%0 Journal Article
%T Seaweeds for umami flavour in the New Nordic Cuisine
%A Ole G Mouritsen
%A Lars Williams
%A Rasmus Bjerregaard
%A Lars Duelund
%J Flavour
%D 2012
%I BioMed Central
%R 10.1186/2044-7248-1-4
%X Herein we review the concept of umami and deliciousness in a historical context and describe recent advances in the scientific understanding of the sensory perception of umami and the involved taste receptors. The primary stimulatory agent in umami is the chemical compound glutamate, which is found in large amounts in the Japanese seaweed konbu, which is used to prepare the soup broth dashi. We have explored the potential of local Nordic seaweeds, in particular sugar kelp and dulse, for dashi production and have discovered that dulse is high in free glutamate and hence a good candidate for umami flavouring. We describe methods by which to optimise the umami flavour using sous-vide techniques for extraction of the seaweeds, and we demonstrate how dulse dashi can be used in concrete recipes for ice cream, fresh cheese and sourdough bread.Although umami was suggested as a basic taste in 1908 by the Japanese chemist Kikunae Ikeda [1], umami only caught on very slowly in the Western world [2-5]. Being a verbal construction to describe the essence of delicious taste ('umai' (ΦΌ€€) is delicious, and 'mi' (ΞΆ) is essence, inner being or taste), the term 'umami' was coined by Ikeda to signify a unique and savoury taste sensation that should be ranked as the fifth basic taste along with the four classical basic taste modalities: sour, sweet, salty and bitter. In the past couple of decades, along with the globalisation of the Asian kitchen, and in particular the Japanese kitchen, umami is being used more commonly in a culinary context among chefs [6,7] and food scientists [8]. The term has now entered the diverse world of cooking recipes and has been the main topic of a couple of cookbooks [9,10] and most recently a popular science book [11].Ikeda based his suggestion of umami as a specific taste on the discovery of a particular substance, monosodium glutamate (MSG), which he found in large quantities in free chemical form in one of the key ingredients that enters dashi, the soup
%K umami
%K seaweed
%K dashi
%K glutamate
%K kelp
%K dulse
%K New Nordic Cuisine
%U http://www.flavourjournal.com/content/1/1/4