Umami, the taste of pleasure
In the 1980’s, a 5th taste was added to the list of the four common tastes of saltiness, sweetness, sourness and bitterness: umami. Umami describes a pleasant, mouth-filling and lingering taste and literally means “delicious taste” in Japanese. This distinctive taste is brought by a specific amino acid and nucleotides.
Often associated with Asian cuisine, umami is found in many other foods like parmesan cheese, dashi, mushroom or tomatoes.
Umami taste offers numerous benefits in food formulation, particularly flavor improvement and salt reduction, which is a challenge for food manufacturers. Umami compensates for the loss of saltiness and maintains the flavor intensity and attractiveness of low salt products.
With a natural content of nucleotides and amino acids, Springer® 2000 and Pronal™ 2000 are ranges of yeast extracts that are powerful in umami taste.