Umami in Sweets: Something a Little Unexpected

Appears in

Umami: Unlocking the Secrets of the Fifth Taste

Published 2014

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In Western cuisines, most desserts are made with a considerable quantity of sugar. The sugar adds sweetness and ensures that desserts made with acidic fruits have a well-balanced taste. It is noteworthy that Japanese cuisine has no tradition of adding sugar to desserts. The sweet tastes in a cake or a candy come from the raw ingredients themselves, such as small red azuki beans.

Here, again, umami comes into the picture. It can interact with sweet tastes, making them more pronounced, with the result that even desserts with only a little sugar seem to be sweeter. One can take advantage of this relationship by using raw ingredients with umami and little taste of their own to reduce the amount of sugar in a traditional dessert, such as a sorbet. Experiments have shown that one can substitute up to 25 percent of the sugar in a sorbet with a suitable quantity of the juice from sun-ripened tomatoes. Umami sorbet with maccha and tomato