umami

American  

[oo-mah-mee] / uˈmɑ mi /

noun

1. a strong meaty taste imparted by glutamate and certain other amino acids: often considered to be one of the basic taste sensations along with sweet, sour, bitter, and salty.

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Etymology

Origin of umami

First recorded in 1960–65; from Japanese: literally, “savory quality, delicious taste,” equivalent to uma-, the inflectional stem of umai “(to be) delicious” + -mi, a suffix forming abstract nouns from adjectives

Example Sentences

You’ve got your pickle plates and umami popcorns, lupini beans and housemade Cheez-Its, smoked oyster dips and caviar on absolutely everything.

From The Wall Street Journal

As she tells it, the special oomph that soy sauce adds to a bake is, in a word, umami.

From Salon

She continues, “The whole point of adding salt is to balance the sweetness in a cookie. But when you’re moving into soy sauce, you have a lot more versatility. And now the fun begins . . . soy sauce has notes of not just saltiness, but umami. And depending on the soy sauce you use, if it’s a high-quality one, it also has other notes. There’s some sweetness. But most importantly, it adds umami. So that’s the difference.”

From Salon

Umami is what makes foods taste delicious, adding a layer of “flavor that just lingers in your mouth and makes you smack your lips,” Lieu says.

From Salon

“And soy sauce always brings a hint of umami and replaces salt for salinity. So, I figured, why not go the other way and curry-fy a peanut-forward treat?”

From Salon