Scientists unlock the secrets of a sixth basic flavor

marco@beehaw.org to Science@beehaw.org – 77 points –
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I like the word 'umami', but it's weird to me that they don't just use 'savory' which is the same thing. Cool that it's been figured out receptor-wise.

Umami is the fifth flavor. This paper is about the sixth, which doesn't seem to have a name other than "ammonium chloride".

"Solid Ammonium Chloride is used to make dry batteries"

I'll definitely have to try some "sweet and battery" poached eggs.

Probably because the scientist was Japanese.

Weird that this flavour that’s been recognised in eastern cuisine for 100s if not 1000s of years uses a borrowed word in English when it’s only been acknowledged in western cuisine for a few decades.

FYI ‘savoury’ is a borrowed word from French.

It is weird that we have a word to describe it, yet instead used a different languages word for something we already have a word for.

It's been acknowledged in western cuisine forever too lol. You think western chefs just could've put a finger on meat char tasting good across all of human history??

No it's just that it was discovered to be a fundamental receptor on the tongue which responds to amino acids. It was discovered by a Japanese researcher. The weird eastern exceptionalism is just silly if you take five seconds to look into why it's named umami.

Savory is kinda salty. Umami is kinda buttery

Umami is just a Japanese neologism for savoury. In my food science course at uni the two terms are used interchangeably.

okay who let the weeb name the taste

The Japanese scientist who discovered it

Weebs will take any chance they can get to name something with a japanese or other asian language's word, true (isekai/portal fantasy, anyone?), but in this particular case "umami" became popularized because it was a japanese scientist that confirmed it was an actual basic flavor. Origin of research and not weeb culture is what put umami on the english map.