Soup is Umami

Viewed through the lens of a gastro-chemist, soup stocks are textbook examples of successful experiments to bring out umami by combining raw ingredients that have glutamate and 5’-ribonucleotides. These are rarely both found in one raw ingredient. In order to have umami in abundance, it is, therefore, generally necessary to have two components, one that has basal umami and another one that interacts synergistically. It is equally important to take into account the multiplier effect of 1 + 1 = 8. Because of the synergy that is characteristic of umami, it often requires only small quantities of nucleotides to have a major effect on the taste of glutamate.