umami

(noun)

one of the five basic tastes, the savory taste of foods such as seaweed, cured fish, aged cheeses and meats

Related Terms

Examples of umami in the following topics:

  • Tastes and Odors

    • The primary tastes detected by humans are sweet, sour, bitter, salty, and umami .
    • The identification of umami as a fundamental taste occurred fairly recently.
    • The taste of umami, also known as savoriness, is attributable to the taste of the amino acid L-glutamate.
    • The adaptive value of being able to distinguish umami is that savory substances tend to be high in protein.
    • These taste buds, located in papillae which are found across the tongue, are specific for the five modalities: salt, sweet, sour, bitter and umami.

  • Gustation: Taste Buds and Taste

    • There are five main tastes: bitter, salty, sweet, sour, and umami (savory).
    • Recently, umami, which is the Japanese word for "savory," was added to this list of basic tastes.
    • Bitter, sweet, and umami tastes use similar mechanisms based on a G protein-coupled receptor, or GPCR.
    • Umami is the newest receptor to be recognized by western scientists in the family of basic tastes.
    • It is thought that umami receptors act similarly to bitter and sweet receptors (involving GPCRs), but very little is known about their actual function.

  • Taste and Smell at Birth and in Old Age

    • These papillae are involved in detecting the five (known) elements of taste perception: salty, sour, bitter, sweet, and umami.
    • Ageusia is the loss of taste functions of the tongue, particularly the inability to detect sweetness, sourness, bitterness, saltiness, and umami (meaning "pleasant/savory taste").
    • Because the tongue can only indicate texture and differentiate between sweet, sour, bitter, salty, and umami, most of what is perceived as the sense of taste is actually derived from smell.

  • Classification of Receptors by Stimulus

    • During taste, sensory neurons in our taste buds detect chemical qualities of our foods including sweetness, bitterness, sourness, saltiness, and umami (savory taste).

  • Conditional probability exercises

    • Umami Burger?
    • (d) What is the probability that a randomly chosen person likes Umami best or that person is female?

  • Reception and Transduction

    • Sweet, bitter, and umami tastants require a G-protein-coupled receptor.

  • Overview of Sensation

    • Five basic tastes exist, sweet, bitter, sour, salty and umami.

  • Sensory Modalities

    • Five basic tastes exist, sweet, bitter, sour, salty and umami.