The Animal Kingdom Delivers Umami in Spades

Meat and dairy products are excellent sources of protein. The art of turning them into tasty food is, therefore, to a great extent a question of breaking down the proteins present in the raw ingredients. Animal innards generally contain more umami substances than meat from the animal muscles. A piece of liver, for example, foie gras, can also have a large quantity of glutathione, a compound that elicits kokumi and, thereby, also enhances umami. Mushrooms, foie gras, and mushroom essence

In order to release the umami, we employ a whole range of techniques: cooking, ripening, curing, drying, salting, smoking, and fermenting. These processes allow us to draw out free amino acids in greater or lesser quantities. Many researchers in the field of evolution posit that our distant ancestors began to cook their food, especially the meat, a few million years ago. Their early culinary efforts were a determining factor in the eventual evolution of Homo sapiens, whose brain required a substantial input of energy in order to be able to develop to such a large size. Cooking the raw ingredients was the only way to make them sufficiently nutritious.