The Fifth Taste: What is Umami?

Even though the word umai had been used in Japan for hundreds of years to signify the concept of something delicious, people only became truly conscious of it thanks to the efforts of a single individual-Japanese professor and chemist Kikunae Ikeda (1864–1936), who set himself the challenge of identifying the substance in Japanese soups that was responsible for their fantastically good taste. He found the answer in 1908.