Monosodium glutamate

Glutamate monosodique

What it is

Ikeda Kikunae boiled down twelve kilos of kombu in 1908, crystallised what was left and named the taste umami. The molecule was not new — glutamic acid is already in parmesan, in a ripe tomato, in anchovy and soy — he had simply separated it from everything else. It is made now the way citric acid is, by fermenting starch or molasses, and the reputation it carries dates from a single letter to a medical journal in 1968 that controlled trials have not since reproduced.

In the kitchen

Weigh it at 0.1 to 0.5 % of the dish and taste between additions — past that a stock turns flat and faintly sweet rather than deeper. It carries about a third the sodium of table salt for the same weight, so it buys savour back from a dish you have had to under-salt.

Goes with

Kombu Katsuobushi (dried bonito) Tomato Parmesan Anchovy Soy sauce Button mushroom Chicken Miso Fish sauce

Also used with

Disodium guanylate Disodium inosinate

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