If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.
-J.R.R Tolkien

10 February 2010

The Fifth Taste

I think we should talk about some current issues in food on the blog and not just recipes. Today I found something that made me laugh. I happened to bump into an interesting piece of news on Yahoo pages; at Waitrose in the UK they are apparantly going to be selling a product called The Fifth Taste, basically Umami flavour in a tube. Umami refers to the savoury taste in meat, cheese and mushrooms.
This paste is made from umami-rich ingredients such as tomato, parmesan and mushrooms.

Picture from Yahoo News

I personally think it sounds really weird but if I have a chance I think I would like to try it just for a laugh, and because I'm not 100% sure what the umami flavour really is. I doubt that it will hit the supermarkets in Finland for a while though. What do you think? Would you ever try it?

4 comments:

  1. no doubt I would buy it and try it! Just no doubt. ....Oh, that how they make money with coolinary addicted people...

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  2. Oh, unami is just the japanese word meaning savory, meaty and good taste, it is not really a new taste at all. This is really only a matter of some cultural confusion, misunderstanding and shrewd martketing. There is no need to buy a espacial tube of something for unami, just some stock cubes.

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  3. Certainly umami as a concept is not new to most of us, but selling a flavour is. I'm not sure if there's any confusion or misunderstanding here but shrewd marketing, for sure!

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