You never know where a culinary inspiration is going to come from…or just how it might influence what you do in the kitchen.
Take our soup for this week, coq a vin. Those of you familiar with this particular French dish know that more than your taste buds get into the mix when you bring a spoonful up to your mouth. Your olfactory sense is bathed in the Burgundy wine that is a key ingredient in the soup base, and that flavor and its accompanying aroma coat your throat and your sinuses as your taste buds begin to pick up on the chicken, bacon, mushrooms and onions in the broth. As Dylan would say, “something’s going on here, but you don’t know what it is, do you, Mr. Jones.”
So, just what is that something? The answer, oddly enough, comes not only from France, but also from Japan. Permit us to explain.
As far back as the ancient Greek philosophers, the conventional gastronomical and anatomical wisdom was that humans could detect four distinct tastes: sweet, sour, salty, and bitter. Even as medical science evolved, the belief continued that our receptors were limited to these four tastes.
It took legendary French chef Auguste Escoffier, and his creation of veal stock in the late 1800s, to prove that we humans could taste an indefinable deliciousness that scientists at the time simply concluded was all in our heads. Halfway around the world, however, a Japanese chemist named Kikunae Ikeda proved that this taste was, in fact, related to a previously undiscovered receptor. This “fifth taste” was given the name umami – Japanese for (appropriately enough), “yummy”. The dish that inspired Ikeda’s research was the classic Japanese soup made from seaweed, dashi.
Umami is, in fact, L-glutamate. Quoting from a recent National Public Radio story, “L-glutamate is found in most living things, but when they die, when organic matter breaks down, the glutamate molecule breaks apart. This can happen on a stove when you cook meat, over time when you age a parmesan cheese, by fermentation as in soy sauce or under the sun as a tomato ripens. When glutamate becomes L-glutamate, that's when things get ‘delicious.’ L-glutamate, said Ikeda, is a fifth taste. When Escoffier created veal stock, he was concentrating umami. When Japanese made their dashi, they were doing the same thing.”
So now you know an interesting piece of culinary and scientific trivia. But more than that, we’ve just given you some insight into how we do what we do in the Brick Oven Bistro kitchen when we make a soup like our coq a vin. Next time you take a bite, you might want to observe a moment of silent praise for Auguste Escoffier and Kikunae Ikeda. Then impress your fellow diners with the statement, “this soup tastes absolutely umami!”