Canned Umami: The Danes’ Preferred “Umami Bomb”

Appears in
Umami: The Fifth Taste
Umami

By Thomas Keller, Harold McGee, Michael Anthony, Heston Blumenthal, Alexandre Bourdas, David Kinch, Virgilio Martinez, Nobu Matsuhisa, Yoshihiro Murata and Pedro Miguel Schiaffino

Published 2014

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Denmark may hold the world record in consumption of canned umami: the 5 million Danes eat 70 million cans of mackerel in tomato sauce every year! Mackerel in tomato sauce is a perfect “umami bomb” with plenty of synergy: glutamate from the tomato sauce and inosinate from the cooked mackerel. Traditionally it is eaten on rye bread, but modern chefs have also reinterpreted the tradition and brought it into fine dining.

A modern interpretation of “canned mackerel in tomato sauce”: fried mackerel, morels, sun-ripened tomato, burned potato, and white asparagus, topped with fermented mackerel fish sauce, a veritable “umami bomb.”