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The Japanese Discover Other Umami Substances
Appears in
By Ole Mouritsen and Klavs Styrbæk
Published 2014
Already in 1913, one of Professor Ikeda’s students, Dr. Shintaro Kodama, made a new discovery related to umami. He found that the substance that brings out umami in katsuobushi is a ribonucleotide, inosinate or inosine-5’-monophosphate (IMP), derived from the nucleic acid inosinic acid. His work was based partly on that of the German chemist Justus von Liebig, who had isolated inosinate from beef soup in 1847.
Nothing further happened until 1957, when another Japanese researcher, Dr. Akira Kuninaka, discovered and identified yet another nucleotide with umami taste. In the course of studying the biochemistry involved in the breakdown of the nucleic acids in yeast, Dr. Kuninaka found that a ribonucleotide, guanylate or guanosine-5’-monophosphate (GMP), which is derived from the nucleic acid guanylic acid, is also a source of umami. Subsequently, the presence of guanylate was detected in dried shiitake mushrooms, whose rich umami taste was already well known to both Japanese and Chinese cooks. As in the case of glutamate, these ribonucleotides had been identified scientifically in the course of the nineteenth century, but no one had taken an interest in their effects on taste.