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Creating Tastes Synthetically

Appears in
Umami: Unlocking the Secrets of the Fifth Taste

By Ole Mouritsen and Klavs Styrbæk

Published 2014

  • About
Building on discoveries about the nature of basic tastes and especially what brings out umami and synergizes with it, researchers have tried to mix together pure substances to mimic the taste of a particular food, for example, shellfish. Opinions vary as to whether or not this has been successful or if it can even be done. After all, there are still researchers who think that it is not feasible to evoke all other possible taste sensations with only the five basic tastes.
Experiments have been carried out to try to reproduce the taste of scallops. Tasters found that, in a synthetic mixture of glutamate, adenylate, glycine, aniline, and arginine, all the components played a part in simulating the taste of scallops with regard to the five basic tastes, as well as their aftertaste and palatability. On the other hand, inosinate had no effect on such a mixture, which makes sense seeing as scallops themselves have none. (See the tables at the back of the book.)

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