Of course, as more is learned about the chemistry of umami, then there is more information for clever cooks to work with in creating better flavors in their dishes.

(Maybe that explains why I felt the need to add dried porcini mushrooms to the Ogden’s recipe for pork shoulder, white beans and kale, too. But, I have to say–I think that they, along with the sherry/shao hsing wine that I used tipped the gravy over into the realm of “ohmigodcanIhavemoreofthat?”

My daughter is still talking about that dinner.

Let me take another shot at explaining umami synergy. Unfortunately, it is not a straightforward concept, probably because there is so little to compare it to.

Perhaps a good place to start is with another, more familiar case of taste synergy, specifically that of the artichoke and its famous phytochemical, cynarin. If you have ever tried pairing wines with artichokes and found your wine overly sweet, no matter how dry you thought it was, it is the synergizing effect of cynarin which, although not very sweet itself, makes everything else taste sweeter. The wine may taste fine by itself, but once you take a bite of artichoke, the wine tastes too sweet. Try it if you if you haven’t yet, it’s a facinating demo of taste science at work.

A similar effect is achieved with the umami taste. In this case, basic umami comes from amino acids, and synergizing, or amplifying umami comes from a class of food-borne substances called nucleotides. A sauce made from freshly picked, vine-ripened tomatoes is packed with basic (or amino acid-based) umami and probably tastes pretty good by itself. But if you cook in a few mushrooms which are loaded with synergizing (or nucleotide-based) umami, the umami effect is mutilplied many times. You can try this too and it is quite dramatic. If you know which foods have which kinds of umami, you can vary combinations for different umami effects.

I hope that helps. If not, let me know and keep trying. It’s important to getting the most from umami in your meals. Thanks again for all your feedback and support.

It wasn’t that I didn’t think that your recipes were yummy–it was that I didn’t think that they were all that imaginative–and that had nothing to do with you, but with the chefs who were involved with the process. I guess that because they came from chefs–I expected more out of the recipes–I wanted to see them develop processes and techniques to really punch up the umami available in the ingredients.

If you check out the recipe I did from the book–which I renamed, because I changed the process considerably, and added ingredients–you see that I praise it vociferously–Bradley Ogden’s use of the ingredients was superb.

I agree–there is more to be written about umami–and more work to be done. In the West, we are just learning about it, so we really have a lot of work to do together to really understand it.

I really liked how your book pointed out all of the most recent research (though I think you could have explained the difference between plain umami and “synergizing” umami a little more clearly–but from what I can tell it is a fuzzy area that may just be darned hard to explain), and how you stated over and over again that umami is not just the flavor of glutamate.

As for the Asian ingredients–what I was really looking for was some chefs to use Asian ingredients in a non-traditional way–you mention the fact that lots of chefs sneak fish sauce into dishes that never saw Thailand (and I agree–that is my experience as well–I have seen chefs do it, I have done it myself), but I was hoping to see some creative twists in that vein.

Or recipes that combined both Eastern and Western umami ingredients from various cuisines in bold abandon.

That said–I enjoyed the book and don’t regret picking it up in the slightest. I had fun reading it, and I look forward to learning more about umami, and learning how to use it effectively in my own cookery.

Thank you for stopping by and thank you very much for commenting on my blog–it means a lot.

(So–what will your next cookbook be about?)