PHOTO: ISTOCK. PRICES CORRECT AT TIME OF GONIG TO PRESS
WHAT IS IT?
Notoriously hard to define, the word comes from the Japanese for ‘delicious’ or ‘yummy’. It describes a collection of flavours that don’t fall into the sweet, salty, sour or bitter categories (it’s often referred to as the ‘fifth taste’). Its discovery dates back to 1908, when chemist Dr Kikunae Ikeda found his cucumber soup tasted better for the addition of kelp and went on to explore why. The flavour occurs naturally in kelp and other foods, such as soy sauce, but in recent years it’s started appearing in supermarkets in the form of a manufactured paste, powder or soup.