Umami is the fifth taste in the human palate. Though this ‘fifth taste’ was actually discovered by Kikunae Ikeda, a chemistry professor at the Imperial University of Tokyo, over a century ago, the notion has only recently been accepted by the Western world.
The word itself derives from the Japanese word ‘umai’ which means delicious; it refers to something which is distinctly savoury – not sweet, sour, salty or bitter, but clearly and separately savoury. Professor Kikunae Ikeda’s notion of umami was driven by the taste he experienced when eating dashi – the base of many Japanese soups (be aware that traditional dashi contains fish, and hence is not vegan). The principal taste in dashi, however, is from its primary (vegan!) ingredient, the seaweed Laminaria japonica, aka kombu.