August 20, 2015 • 35 mins
For millennia humans have recognized four tastes, but in the 1980s a fifth taste first isolated in Japan gained worldwide acceptance - and took off like a rocket! Learn about meaty, musty, savory umami in this episode.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to you Stuff you should Know from house Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, I'm welcome to the podcast. I'm
Josh Clark, Charles W Chuck Bryant and Jerry and so
this is stuff you should know. I tell you about
to change the name of the show right there on
(00:22):
a whim. No, no, no, all right, that's very meaty
and savory of you. M Can you smell my juices
I'm cooking in them. You smell like a fish stock.
Oh yeah, yeah, you know I did it. Don't be
dumb on ketch Up. The origin of ketch Up, the
good one and it actually oh you saw that? You
(00:44):
watched this? Of course I do. I had no idea.
I'm your biggest fan. You're one of the well no,
I'm one of those people. It's like this, guys so dumb,
what kind of it? I don't get it. Get through
the boy? Is he acting like that? But I just
keep watching them. I can't help it. So you saw
the one about Ketchup, and you know about catchy Up,
the Vietnamese fish sauce that actually serves as the basis
(01:06):
for Ketchup. Yes, the American condiment which is not the
number one selling condiment. In America. No, what is it mayonnaise? Oh? Yes,
did you know that? Manaise clearly didn't. What kind dukes
is your brain? Right? Well, I'm dukes, But I'm just
I'm gonna I find myself a defender of mayonnaise because
(01:26):
my whole life people have just thought it was gross.
Not everyone you would do well in like France or Belgium. Buddy, Yeah,
like on a hamburger and hot dog people like, because
I don't like ketchup and people think I'm weird. Oh no,
you need some ketchup too, Not that much. I've also
found recently, as a grown up adult, a real live
one that like, you can replace ketchup with tomatoes and
(01:46):
it tastes maybe even better, depending on the ketchup you
mean on a burger, Yes, instead of both, you just
mean no ketchup. Yeah, you could put in both. I'm
not I'm not opposed to it. No, it's just it
I've found and it was a big surprise to me,
a really big surprise that if you just put tomatoes,
(02:08):
a good tomato on and no ketchup, you're actually creating
the taste that you're looking for with ketchup. That just
misses it slightly because it's gotten more than tomatoes in it. Right.
It's really, again, very surprising to me, even though I realized,
of course that tomato is made from ketchup is made
from tomatoes, Like, I haven't made that connection. I just
(02:30):
didn't realize how good just tomatoes were on a burger
without ketchup. I don't like raw a tomatoes either, so
I wouldn't do that. And you can't dip our French
right in a tomato. Well, no, I'm not opposed to
catch up. I'll still use ketchup not here, especially for
dipping fries. I'm cool with that. I'm not down and
ketch up here is what I'm trying to say. I
(02:50):
just think that tomatoes are great on a burger. But
I also like mayo too, I think is ultimately the
point that started me off on this. Yeah, I like
tomato sauce, like red sauce, but I don't like raw
tomatoes or just whole tomatoes. They're slimmy, and I'm not
supposed to eat them like an apple or anything. If
you've been doing that, I can understand why you don't
(03:11):
like raw tomatoes. Some people do. Some people to slice
them in the amount plate. They're not just holding it
in your hand eating it like an asshole. Look at
a monster does that? That's what I'm saying, a monster
becaus are well Helm the second Yeah, he was, he
was known, all right. So all of that to say, mommy,
(03:32):
oh mommy, Oh mama, this one's about o mommy. The
fifth flavor, the fifth beetle, out of what they now
say is six fat fat carbon dioxide is also one too.
We supposedly they've found receptors that are tailored specifically to
(03:54):
sensing carbon dioxide on the tongue, and that ultimately that
makes it qualify as so they're gonna be seven now,
I think way more. I don't know why science has
been so stingy 're so reluctant to accept the idea
that we have more than four flavor receptors, or more
four taste receptors. But oh mommy, was isolated in the
(04:16):
in the beginning of the twentieth century, and it wasn't
for almost eighty years before the West finally accepted it. Yeah.
Part of the reasons because it was the research was
written in Japanese. Well it's okay, that's maybe had something
to do with it uh. And part of the issue
was that um, it's you Mommy is very mild and taste,
(04:39):
and when you have um high concentrations of it to
increase set flavor, you've got salty and sour mixed in.
So I think it just confounded the West. They're like,
what we get sour, we get salty, we get sweet,
for sure, why we even get bitter, but we don't
(05:01):
get this other thing. Nope, and we're not going over five.
So you better make the summi stuff good. That's what
the West said, dumb Western scientists and food scientists. So chuck,
I think we let the cat out of the bag
a little bit. Um. The Japanese are the ones who
first discovered ummi's right comes from the word um i uh,
(05:23):
roughly translated as delicious. Uh. Chefs, if you talk to
a chef and mommy's a big hot thing right now,
they'll say, maybe it's like a mushroomy thing, it's like
an earthy it's it's it is very subtle. Like I said,
it's musty. Yeah, musty, which doesn't sound appealing, No, but
it also makes sweet different. That's ou Mommy's big, great quality,
(05:47):
And I think that's probably one of the reasons why
it was hard for the West to accept it is
ou Mommy's big thing is synergizing. It's a supporting cast
member almost. Yeah, it takes, Yes, it is. It's like,
um Bud Bundy not a leading guy, but you put
(06:09):
him in an ensemble, He's gonna bring everybody else up.
It's what he's known for. I would give a million
American dollars to be inside your brain during that five
ish seconds of your spinning around searching for supporting cast
member and ending up at Bud Bundy. Will you come
back in twenty years and give me a million dollars
and I will let you man. That would be amazing.
(06:30):
So um with like salty sour, we get again, we
get those things. They stand on their own. Umami actually
has a very mild and not necessarily like pleasurable flavor
on its own. Yeah, you don't want something that's like, oh,
this is just umami flavored, right, but it is almost
like it's designed to interact with other flavors, especially salty
(06:53):
and especially sweet. Agreed, and ummmy can even interact with itself.
And all of a sudden, it takes what was just
like home day and turns it into the greatest day
of your life with one bite of cham with some
hot umami on umami action. Uh. So it is nothing new, obviously,
(07:16):
It's not like you can just identify new taste. Um.
It's been around. Um. The Romans and the Greeks before
them enjoyed something called garum and that is a sauce that. Boy,
you want to talk about how you find something weird
food wise? They were gutting fish and they said, let's
take this fish cuts and blood and let's salt it
(07:37):
and leave it out in the sun for three months
and see what happens. See what happened, and you have
to eat it, eat it you uh, and someone eventually
ate it. They strained the liquid from the top of
it and they said, boy, this sauce is this is
garam sauce. This good stuff is delicious. Garam means delicious
in ancient Romans. I think so. And it is uh
(07:59):
that was mommy personified um. Because how umami was discovered. Uh.
In nine seven there was a brilliant chemist name uh
Kikunai Aikita sor right that a e. It's got to
make you a little pop to it got you. But yeah,
(08:19):
you did it, thank you. So he was a chemist,
and uh, he worked at the Imperial University. I'm sorry
he was. Yeah, he was a professor at the Imperial
University of Tokyo. And he was perplexed that he tasted
something one day and said, this is not any of
those four flavors. No, no, no, I know this is different.
(08:42):
He was all about the dashi. And dashi is the
basis of miso soups, lots of other stuff, but basically
it's a fish stock made from I think tuna flakes
and um coombu which is dried kelp yes, and the're
all kinds of recipes for a daschi base. And it's
(09:03):
in a lot of things from sauces and like sober
noodle sauces to like you said me, so um really
really big ingredient in Japanese cuisine, right, And this guy
was like, this little boy loves this dashi and I
want to know exactly what is making it so wonderful. So,
since he was a chemist, he took I think something
like twelve ms of dashi and boiled it down ten
(09:27):
of them, isolated some stuff. The first thing that came
out were some obvious ones that he clearly discarded is
not responsible for your mommy, because there were salts. He's like, no,
it's not that. It's not salt. We understand salt. It's
not salt. I know for effact it's not salt. What
else is in here? He starts sorting through it. Right, Well,
didn't he separate the dashi into its parts and then
(09:47):
break those down? Yeah? Okay, I just I jumped ahead
of step to make a terrible chemist. He's on he's
on kelp at this point, one of the ingredients. Okay.
And so with the kelp is where he found the
two salts and your right. He was like, well, I
know these flavors and they're not what I've been experiencing
on my tongue now. They're old news. So he looked
a little further and he found well, wait a minute,
(10:11):
what is this. It's glutamic acid. And he's like, maybe,
but glutamic acid has a sour taste, and that's weird, Like,
it can't be glutamic acid. It doesn't quite make sense.
So he added some more stuff, came up with a
chemical reaction, and what popped out on the other end
is what you and I call monosodium glutamate m s G.
(10:35):
And he figured out that it's not glutamic acid. It's
not the salt, but it's actually glutamate. But then he
figured out even further, it's like glutamate that doesn't make
any sense, like glutamate. Glutamate doesn't work. Then he realized
it's not the protein that's giving it the taste. It's
the amino acids that actually make up proteins that give
(10:55):
ou mommy its taste. Boom, So glutamate, I'm sorry, isn't
amino acid right? Right? Right? And that's one of the
things that gives you mommy's tastes. This is the first
thing that was discovered, um, to give you mommy it's taste. Yeah,
And that was the kelp. So you know, Dashi has
a different components. So he had a student. He said,
(11:16):
you know what, let me get that the dried tuna flakes. Um, yeah,
bonito delicious. There's different kinds, but bonita is definitely one
of them. Um. And he says, let me identify these components.
And what he found was something called uh, you want
to try that one and the sianate is that right? Yeah?
(11:37):
I think that is right? Man, it's a nucleic acid.
Like you say, yes, So he's like, boom, I've got
number two. And then in nineteen sixty another scientist named
Akira uh Kuni Knaka. He worked for Yamasa, the famous
soy saucier And now you're just showing off. He was,
um and he went on to work in pharmaceuticals. It
(11:59):
was interesting, oh the chemist. Yeah, but it's like you
work for soy sauce and then you go to work
for a pharmaceutical company. Right, I'm good at both things.
But you're right, it's all this chemistry. Um. So he said,
you know what, I can identify a third thing called guanilate.
It's another nucleotide in those shataki mushrooms you were talking about. Yeah,
(12:20):
and it's not like just bonito flakes, combo and saki
mushrooms are the only things that produce a mommy taste.
These are just the three things that those guys went
to town and isolated different stuff out of right. Yeah,
I always want to see Bonita apple bum when you
say Bonita tribe called quest After all these years, they
keep making reference, they keep making appearances in episodes lately.
(12:43):
Oh yeah, they have been. Huh you mentioned him in
Hula Hoops. Yeah, this one, you can't remember which one.
We talked about the scenario, what's the what's the what's
the scenario? You know what? My friend Justin whom you
also know, his mother actually left her wallet and els
a gun no way, And he even called me. He
(13:03):
was like, dude, guess what happened? My mother left a
wallet and elsa gundo. That's crazy. Yeah, it was pretty remarkable.
We should probably take a break, Yeah, and then we'll
talk a little bit more about the science of taste
right after this. So we have done an episode on
(13:36):
taste that was great. It was great called Taste and
How it Works from July right, highly recommended. Yeah, but
we're gonna go over a little bit more here. Well, yeah,
I think if we're gonna talk about mommy, we'd be
big jerks if we just assumed, you know everything there
is to know about. Yeah, we got to talk about
what's called the gustatory system. Okay, So, um, when we're
(13:57):
talking about taste specifically, that's separate it from flavor, which
we'll get to. But taste begins on the tongue, right,
and on the tongue you're gonna find what we like
to call taste buds or pepilla. The pa have taste
buds on them, right, Yes, there are three main types
of papia. You have the fun fungy form, mushroom shaped,
(14:20):
the foli eight. Those are the ridges and grooves at
the back of the tongue, and the circumvallate and those
are circular at the front front end of the tongue, right.
And then some papi a have a couple of taste buds.
Some have hundreds of taste buds. And then when you
look into the taste buds themselves, um, they have receptor cells.
(14:41):
And what's interesting is when you think about a taste buds,
you'd be like, oh, well, there's a salty taste bud,
sweet taste bud, ou mommy ou mommy, sweet, sour, bitter, right,
carbon dioxide. So that's not the case. As a matter
of fact, taste bud has different recept our selves, and
these different recept our selves can be tuned to accept
(15:02):
or sense different types of taste. Wasn't it the shape
if I remember correctly that, well, that was with the smell.
Smell and tasted closely related, and we should say that
the spoiler alert for the taste episode. We're not a
harm percent sure how we sense taste or smell um,
but yes, the the predominant theory is that the a
(15:25):
specific type of odorant or taste molecule will interact with
a specific type of receptor and when it does, the
chemical in that molecule, that food molecule um unlocks that
receptor and by doing that, it's translated into an electrical impulse. Boom.
So you chew your food up, gets spitty and saliva covered,
(15:49):
and it breaks it down, cut your tongue and that's
when that transduction. Uh, those electrical impulses are sent to
the n st the solitary tract of the brain, sorry,
the nucleus of the soliditary tract of the brain. Yeah,
that's where it all happens. That's when it puts all
these different tastes together and says delicious, I like this
(16:10):
or more to the point, and that's probably going to
kill you, so stop eating that. And like we said,
taste is different than flavor. Taste is just one aspect
of flavor for a food item or really anything to
have a flavor, It includes not just the taste but
also the smell, the side of it, the temperature of it,
(16:30):
how it feels, the firm is it a little too gelatinous? Um.
These are all things that your brain takes into account, um,
including things like memories that you form from having it before.
Cotton candy when I was a kid gives me great memories. Yeah,
So that plays a part in flavor exactly, like you
can like it releases some different aspect of it that
(16:54):
only you can experience that flavor. Yeah, Like if you
had a cotton candy jelly bean, it would conjure up
that memory and that would be part of the flavor
r experience yea, or if it's one of your past lives.
So that's kind of the science of taste and with
your mommy specifically. Um. Again, one of the things that
the West was having trouble with this accepting that ou
(17:15):
momi was a real thing was that there wasn't any
um what's called psychophysical evidence that oummi was its own taste. Right.
For a long time, they thought it was just a
component of salty taste because monosodium glutamate is a type
of salt, Right, It's a salt protein combination that makes
(17:36):
MSG and for many many years this was the only
um this is the only source of oummy taste. But
finally in the eighties, once they had the first international
symposium on New Mommy, it was a real thing. Um
the I'll bet it was too because it was in Hawaii,
and the Japanese and Americans love Hawaii, so I bet
(17:58):
everybody was partying down there. They started to do studies
in the early eighties and they found oh, actually no,
there are specific receptor cells on the human tongue. And
it turns out not just in human tongues, but mostly
human tongues that are designed or geared towards accepting we're
sensing umami tastes. That's right. Those are the g protein
(18:20):
coupled receptors g pc rs, and that is for sweet, bitter,
and umami and uh, sour and salty those a little different.
Those sort of flow through ion channels, which is way
over my head, to be honest. Well, it's just like
if a molecule is a positive charge of a negative charge.
If it's if it's a positive ion it has positive charge,
(18:41):
it's not gonna make it through all sorts of the channels.
It's only gonna make it through positive channels. It's not
it's simple, I know, but as far as relating that
to a taste, it's just sort of I can think
of his manage. Well that's the whole thing. It's like
you said, it's like it's like your brain just turns advantage.
It's transduction is taking in a chemical and turning it
into an electrical charge. I just think that's endlessly fascinating.
(19:05):
Oh sure, the senses and how they work, it's like
it's amazing, But not just that electricity an electric electrical generation,
like you remember that episode Electricity maybe one of our
best if you ask me. Agreed, alright, So what way,
what we have here are three kinds of receptor cells
that they know are h that that respond to this
(19:25):
combination that makes up what MSG is. I'm sorry, what
UMMI is. It's that the gwenny late and the MSG.
And what they think is that they actually hold on
to these these compounds hold on longer, which is why
you get these interesting combinations. When you have like, uh,
(19:47):
cheese with an apple or cheese on an apple pie.
It takes sweet and like doesn't just make it sweeter,
it makes it like sweet in a different way right exactly. Um.
And the same thing again when when you mixed together
different types of either amino acids or nucleic acids that
create a new mommy taste, they magnify this ummmy nous
(20:08):
of this is meatiness of the whole thing. And um
also with I believe salty too, Oh mommy and salty
mixed together. Um. The fact that it it hangs onto
that that molecule longer and it just leaves that charge going.
Then that sweet can come and go, but it's it's
affected by it. Food science is so interesting, it is.
(20:31):
And we're gonna talk a little more about food science
and evolution right after this. All right, So here's one
(20:53):
thing I didn't get, and I reread this a few times.
I get the first part of this, which is as follows,
is that people have long thought that tastes had a
part in evolution and that we were just wired to
know that if something sweet is probably okay to eat
and that will give us nutrition, something really bitter may
be dangerous to eat, that might be poisonous. And of
(21:15):
course there's exceptions to all of this. Those are pretty
good general rules when it comes to uh evolution. Right,
that that was the evolution explanation for the sense of taste, right, yeah,
But what I don't get and is where in here
does it explain the evolutionary uh method of umami? Like
what role it played? I got this, you're ready? Well,
(21:37):
is it this part about cooking? Yes? Oh it was
very poorly stated, it really was. But it's really interesting
that what you realize this that so you said that
ou momi is is like one of the newer tastes
or something like that, it actually is. Yeah, they couldn't
figure out like what part did this have an evolution? No,
but even before that, like if you look at it
evolutionarily speaking, it's it's actually very old. Supposedly the receptors
(22:02):
are very old, like four million years old or something
like that. But the idea that we can taste you mommy,
or us tasting you mommy is very actually fairly recent,
because ou mommy is released by cooking food. Like if
you eat a bunch of raw hamburger, that's that's not
gonna be umami tasting. It's not gonna taste very good.
(22:25):
But you cook that hamburger and you have molecularly changed
its composition. You've unlocked some of the proteins into its
constituent amino acids, and all of a sudden, you've got
umami taste. It's like a caramelizing an onion is completely
different than the taste of a raw onion or even
a just regular grilled onion. Yeah, and the big mystery
(22:48):
of all this, evolutionarily speaking, is that what you're gaining
or one of the biggest sources of umami taste is glutamate.
Well that's great, but the human body produces tons of glutamate,
so it wouldn't make sense that we would have a
taste receptor to find it in nature because we got
enough in our body. Well, you need other essential amino acids.
And if it figures that the best way to get
(23:11):
amino acids is to cook or ferment food, you want,
you need you need fire because amino acids can be
bound to proteins and we don't absorb them as well,
or our body spends a lot more energy of breaking
them down and digesting them than if we cook them
or if we ferment them. So man invent fire, man
(23:31):
starts to cook food, man advances more rapidly. Yes, that's
one of the ideas that um why our brain developed
as well as it did, or we'd be came as
intelligent as we did was from cooking food. So we
were able to um break down our food a lot
more easily and gain from it, absorb it, and um
(23:51):
basically grow huge brains that it came from cooking. And
where where do we get O mommy taste from cooked
or fermented food where these proteins have been broken down
into much more easily absorbed amino acid constituents. Man, I
like that. I agree. I feel like I just made
it confusing, though, did it come across No, it's it's
totally makes sense. We learned how to cook food and
(24:14):
that put us at the head of the evolutionary ladder.
Right and OUMMI tastes comes from cooked or for many food? Yeah,
very clear? Uh? What is not clear or maybe it
is clear? Is MSG bad for you? A lot of
people say it makes me dizzy, or it makes my
heart flutter or or you know the MSG crash after
(24:35):
you go the Chinese food buffet. Well, there's actually something
called Chinese food syndrome. Not not true. Apparently it's a myth,
supposedly culturally bound syndrome where like very few other cultures
outside of the United States or the West even think
of the idea that MSG can make you sick, and
(24:56):
that it's apparently a psycho somatic reaction where you expect
MSG is going to make you sick, so you get sick. Yep,
that's one explanation. Maybe your body or our bodies are
just different in how we process and metabolize MSG, or
maybe you have oded a little bit too much of
anything could be a bad thing, right, Uh, it could
(25:19):
be all these things. But what science is saying is
there's no evidence that MSG is bad for you quote
unquote right, And apparently study after study found that people
that that MSG doesn't cause these things. Yeah, it's it's weird,
So get off the couch, lazy, you're just looking for
excuse to not cut the grass. And so MSG again,
(25:42):
it has kind of a bad has kind of a
bad rap here in the US, but it's everywhere. And
it was actually one of the first things that Um, yeah,
professor Akita Um did was he figured out a way
to patent extra thing monosoda imglutamate from wheat, which is
(26:03):
where it sound much more abundantly than in like kelp,
and package it into a seasoning, and he he had
no ill will. He's like, this is great. This can
make that boring dish like taste better that healthy boring
dish tastes better. So it's not it's ironic then that
people think it's bad for you, when in fact, when
he packaged it, he was like, this is gonna be
(26:23):
good for you. It's gonna make this thing that's good
for you taste even better and our country is going
to be very healthy. Right. Yeah, but it's hard to find,
he said. It wasn't everything, but it's disguised and ingredients. Yeah,
against stealthily because MSG has a bad rap here in
the West. Yeah, they should just put MSG right. They do.
Sometimes for the most part, though, they will call it
(26:43):
something like hydrolyzed wheat protein because remember it can be
extracted from wheat um. Sometimes they'll call it just natural flavors, yeah,
because all these things are natural. What else texturized vegetable protein,
autolized yeast extract right, uh yeah, or just natural flavors.
So if you see that, that can be a lot
(27:05):
of things though, but just natural flavors, you don't know
what you're eating. But there are some upsides to using
this MSG. It's actually it actually can be used in
the way that Professor A. Keda envisioned it, which is
taking stuff and making it slightly healthier. Actually, when you
have UM, when you use certain like a potassium chloride
(27:28):
rather than sodium chloride to make MSG, you can actually
replace the sodium in UM a dish. So if you
have a sodium problem, you can use some of this stuff. Hey,
how about that, Uh, low fat food that didn't taste
so good? A little MSG it tastes better, right, Although
(27:48):
recent medical research suggests that you should be not eating
low fat food, that regular fat food is not bad
for you. Or hey, old person, you don't taste so
good anymore and need medication that even dampens that. Right,
Why don't you throw some MSG on there? Why why
don't you back to life? You know? Yes, so chuck um.
(28:12):
Whether MSG is a bad rap or not, it's definitely
all over the place. Uh, and it is making things
taste good in my opinion, Moms here to stay it is.
But there's other ways to to get an umami flavor
out of food. And this this article actually has some
helpful tips for your cooking. If you want to go
and cook and get a umami taste. Have you ever
(28:35):
been to umami Burger? No? I haven't. It sounds awesome,
it's good. I like it. It sounds like you can
make one at home with some mushrooms. Yeah. Umami Burger
is a chain. Uh. I don't know where they have them,
but I had in Los Angeles and they add a
powdered mushroom and seaweed to the beef with little soy sauce.
You don't even know what you're eating except that it
(28:56):
tastes good. You know, you're like, hmm, detect the mushroom
and seaweed in this burger, all right, it's just umami
flavored um And you know it's interesting. There's this uh
I think it's called like Umami Information dot Com or
something like that, really interesting site. But they point out
that um while you associate umami with Asian cooking, it's
(29:22):
actually found all over the world, like in Italy with
tomato sauces and catch up in the United States. Uh,
in cheeses in Europe. Um. In West Africa they have
something called um oh what is it called sambara. I
think it's kind of like a miso in West Africa
(29:42):
that sounds kind of delicious. Sombala that sounds good, just
like the sounds of it exactly. So it's it's interesting
that like people have been cooking with ou mommy stuff
long before we ever knew the word U mommy um.
And it's been around the world too. Uh, carmelzing onions
we mentioned in like butter nothing better? Um what else? Um?
(30:06):
You can put parmesan cheese rinds into a super stew
and it'll o mommy. That thing up. That's a good one.
If you're making a stock, use bones of an animal
and suppose against that kind of thing. The guy who
invented veal stock is reputed to have believed that there
was a fifth taste that had yet been unidentified back
(30:28):
in the nineteenth century. He's like, I just boiled this calf.
He's like that there's something going on here besides the
Big four. Wow, nobody believed. Uh. If you're cooking with mushrooms,
and I recommend this with all vegetables, roast those things
a little bit first. It brings out all kinds of
flavors and it makes your brain bigger. Like if you
(30:48):
if you got to make an omelet, don't just throw
raw peppers and stuff in there, cook that stuff up
a little bit on the side, then add that to
the egg mixture. It makes the world of difference. You know,
everybody should watch Internet Roundup just just to get an
idea of what like our little gesticulations are. Like when
(31:10):
you're talking about like cooking peppers on the side and
throw them in there, like just the you're making very
cute little hand gestures over there. We'll always joke with
Emily that I'm gonna open an omelet stand on the
beach one day. It's my retirement job. She's like, why
an omelets stand on the beach. I was like, because
no one's ever done it. No, they really haven't you
ever go to the beach. You're laying there in the
hot sun. Like I could use an omelet every time.
(31:32):
I think. I just want my retirement job to be
very slow paced and not busy, and you'll get to
eat omelets. You got anything else? Um, cooking with wine
is a good one too, Yeah, that's o Momi City.
Um No, just go forth and try O mommy ng
up your dishes and you will be happy. You will
(31:53):
be happy. It's it'll be an indefinable quality, but you'll
know it's you, mommy. Yes, should be something about it.
I can't put my finger on it. You'll say this
stuff is ouh my, which again means delicious roughly in Japanese.
If you want to know more about ouh mommy, you
(32:13):
can type that word in the search bart how stuff
works dot com. Uh. And since I said, oh mommy,
it's time again for a listener mail, I'm just gonna
call this a nice, simple thank you from a listener.
Those are nice. Uh, sometimes it is nice. You know.
It's for Meredith from Granite Falls, Minnesota, and she's just
(32:34):
thanking us because she has a boring summer job. She said,
I work at a hospital and I scan a bunch
of old files into an external hard drive. That's what
I do is I remove a lot of staples, stare
at the scanner, and a wait works to be done.
I'll or and over. Yeah. Can you imagine there? It's like, oh,
we need to ditchitize all these records. Let's hire someone
(32:55):
to do that. Yeah. So God bless you Meredith for
doing that. I found listening to eight hours of music
just wasn't doing the trick anymore. Then I discovered the
wonderful world of podcasts, and you guys are my all
time Thames. You guys are so funny and I love
all the dumb jokes you make. I don't know if
they're dumb. I think like groundbreaking is a dog way. Yeah. Uh.
(33:17):
They really make my day, guys. And even if I
don't understand all the tangents you go off on because
I'm only twenty one and don't understand most of these
references you make the movies or pop culture things from
decades gone by, I still enjoyed that the podcast is
more of a conversation between you guys than just strictly
reading from a script. Oh yeah, we don't even have
a script. Clearly, that would be the worst script ever.
(33:39):
M One of these days I'll have a real story
to share directly related to a recent show. But for now,
I just want to say thank you so much and
keep up the amazing work that is best wishes from Meredith. Meredith,
thank you. And she's a PostScript that says, I absolutely
love it when Josh Josh calls Chuckers. Don't even know why.
I just mad, some smile, we nice and it just
(34:01):
has a ring. Suckers it's a fun word. It is.
It's like ou mommy said, mommy a watch. I wonder
how many times I don't know if we should have
an umami counter on the website. You know, yeah, it
would be cool. I don't know if we are familiar
with the technology that could do that, though, And at
the end it just turns into a big pile of
(34:23):
salty dried fish cuts. I seriously am making some top
notch me so soup. I've been inspired too. You've gotten
pretty good everything. Yeah, yeah, I've gotten pretty good at
um hot and sour soup. But I make it from
a mix and just add some stuff to it. This
I'm going to make from like dashi and miso from scratch. Well,
(34:45):
I'm not gonna like ferment the soybeans or anything like that.
But you're gonna make your own dashi. No, I'm gonna
buy dashi. You should make your own dashi. I'm not
gonna make my own doshi. You know how bad my
apartment would smell if I like fermented and then boiled
down fish just to make the stock. Need it crazy?
You need a spice kitchen. I do need a spice kitchen,
now that you mentioned it, um No, but I will
(35:06):
let you know how the miso soup turns out. Okay.
If you want to get in touch with us, you
can tweet to us at s Y s K podcast.
You can join us on Facebook, dot com, slash stuff
you Should Know. You can send us an email, the
Stuff Podcast, the house, Stuff Works dot com, and as always,
join us at our home on the web, Stuff you
Should Know dot com For more on this and thousands
(35:32):
of other topics because it how stuff Works. Dot com
Welcome to you Stuff you should Know from house Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, I'm welcome to the podcast. I'm
Josh Clark, Charles W Chuck Bryant and Jerry and so
this is stuff you should know. I tell you about
to change the name of the show right there on
(00:22):
a whim. No, no, no, all right, that's very meaty
and savory of you. M Can you smell my juices
I'm cooking in them. You smell like a fish stock.
Oh yeah, yeah, you know I did it. Don't be
dumb on ketch Up. The origin of ketch Up, the
good one and it actually oh you saw that? You
(00:44):
watched this? Of course I do. I had no idea.
I'm your biggest fan. You're one of the well no,
I'm one of those people. It's like this, guys so dumb,
what kind of it? I don't get it. Get through
the boy? Is he acting like that? But I just
keep watching them. I can't help it. So you saw
the one about Ketchup, and you know about catchy Up,
the Vietnamese fish sauce that actually serves as the basis
(01:06):
for Ketchup. Yes, the American condiment which is not the
number one selling condiment. In America. No, what is it mayonnaise? Oh? Yes,
did you know that? Manaise clearly didn't. What kind dukes
is your brain? Right? Well, I'm dukes, But I'm just
I'm gonna I find myself a defender of mayonnaise because
(01:26):
my whole life people have just thought it was gross.
Not everyone you would do well in like France or Belgium. Buddy, Yeah,
like on a hamburger and hot dog people like, because
I don't like ketchup and people think I'm weird. Oh no,
you need some ketchup too, Not that much. I've also
found recently, as a grown up adult, a real live
one that like, you can replace ketchup with tomatoes and
(01:46):
it tastes maybe even better, depending on the ketchup you
mean on a burger, Yes, instead of both, you just
mean no ketchup. Yeah, you could put in both. I'm
not I'm not opposed to it. No, it's just it
I've found and it was a big surprise to me,
a really big surprise that if you just put tomatoes,
(02:08):
a good tomato on and no ketchup, you're actually creating
the taste that you're looking for with ketchup. That just
misses it slightly because it's gotten more than tomatoes in it. Right.
It's really, again, very surprising to me, even though I realized,
of course that tomato is made from ketchup is made
from tomatoes, Like, I haven't made that connection. I just
(02:30):
didn't realize how good just tomatoes were on a burger
without ketchup. I don't like raw a tomatoes either, so
I wouldn't do that. And you can't dip our French
right in a tomato. Well, no, I'm not opposed to
catch up. I'll still use ketchup not here, especially for
dipping fries. I'm cool with that. I'm not down and
ketch up here is what I'm trying to say. I
(02:50):
just think that tomatoes are great on a burger. But
I also like mayo too, I think is ultimately the
point that started me off on this. Yeah, I like
tomato sauce, like red sauce, but I don't like raw
tomatoes or just whole tomatoes. They're slimmy, and I'm not
supposed to eat them like an apple or anything. If
you've been doing that, I can understand why you don't
(03:11):
like raw tomatoes. Some people do. Some people to slice
them in the amount plate. They're not just holding it
in your hand eating it like an asshole. Look at
a monster does that? That's what I'm saying, a monster
becaus are well Helm the second Yeah, he was, he
was known, all right. So all of that to say, mommy,
(03:32):
oh mommy, Oh mama, this one's about o mommy. The
fifth flavor, the fifth beetle, out of what they now
say is six fat fat carbon dioxide is also one too.
We supposedly they've found receptors that are tailored specifically to
(03:54):
sensing carbon dioxide on the tongue, and that ultimately that
makes it qualify as so they're gonna be seven now,
I think way more. I don't know why science has
been so stingy 're so reluctant to accept the idea
that we have more than four flavor receptors, or more
four taste receptors. But oh mommy, was isolated in the
(04:16):
in the beginning of the twentieth century, and it wasn't
for almost eighty years before the West finally accepted it. Yeah.
Part of the reasons because it was the research was
written in Japanese. Well it's okay, that's maybe had something
to do with it uh. And part of the issue
was that um, it's you Mommy is very mild and taste,
(04:39):
and when you have um high concentrations of it to
increase set flavor, you've got salty and sour mixed in.
So I think it just confounded the West. They're like,
what we get sour, we get salty, we get sweet,
for sure, why we even get bitter, but we don't
(05:01):
get this other thing. Nope, and we're not going over five.
So you better make the summi stuff good. That's what
the West said, dumb Western scientists and food scientists. So chuck,
I think we let the cat out of the bag
a little bit. Um. The Japanese are the ones who
first discovered ummi's right comes from the word um i uh,
(05:23):
roughly translated as delicious. Uh. Chefs, if you talk to
a chef and mommy's a big hot thing right now,
they'll say, maybe it's like a mushroomy thing, it's like
an earthy it's it's it is very subtle. Like I said,
it's musty. Yeah, musty, which doesn't sound appealing, No, but
it also makes sweet different. That's ou Mommy's big, great quality,
(05:47):
And I think that's probably one of the reasons why
it was hard for the West to accept it is
ou Mommy's big thing is synergizing. It's a supporting cast
member almost. Yeah, it takes, Yes, it is. It's like,
um Bud Bundy not a leading guy, but you put
(06:09):
him in an ensemble, He's gonna bring everybody else up.
It's what he's known for. I would give a million
American dollars to be inside your brain during that five
ish seconds of your spinning around searching for supporting cast
member and ending up at Bud Bundy. Will you come
back in twenty years and give me a million dollars
and I will let you man. That would be amazing.
(06:30):
So um with like salty sour, we get again, we
get those things. They stand on their own. Umami actually
has a very mild and not necessarily like pleasurable flavor
on its own. Yeah, you don't want something that's like, oh,
this is just umami flavored, right, but it is almost
like it's designed to interact with other flavors, especially salty
(06:53):
and especially sweet. Agreed, and ummmy can even interact with itself.
And all of a sudden, it takes what was just
like home day and turns it into the greatest day
of your life with one bite of cham with some
hot umami on umami action. Uh. So it is nothing new, obviously,
(07:16):
It's not like you can just identify new taste. Um.
It's been around. Um. The Romans and the Greeks before
them enjoyed something called garum and that is a sauce that. Boy,
you want to talk about how you find something weird
food wise? They were gutting fish and they said, let's
take this fish cuts and blood and let's salt it
(07:37):
and leave it out in the sun for three months
and see what happens. See what happened, and you have
to eat it, eat it you uh, and someone eventually
ate it. They strained the liquid from the top of
it and they said, boy, this sauce is this is
garam sauce. This good stuff is delicious. Garam means delicious
in ancient Romans. I think so. And it is uh
(07:59):
that was mommy personified um. Because how umami was discovered. Uh.
In nine seven there was a brilliant chemist name uh
Kikunai Aikita sor right that a e. It's got to
make you a little pop to it got you. But yeah,
(08:19):
you did it, thank you. So he was a chemist,
and uh, he worked at the Imperial University. I'm sorry
he was. Yeah, he was a professor at the Imperial
University of Tokyo. And he was perplexed that he tasted
something one day and said, this is not any of
those four flavors. No, no, no, I know this is different.
(08:42):
He was all about the dashi. And dashi is the
basis of miso soups, lots of other stuff, but basically
it's a fish stock made from I think tuna flakes
and um coombu which is dried kelp yes, and the're
all kinds of recipes for a daschi base. And it's
(09:03):
in a lot of things from sauces and like sober
noodle sauces to like you said me, so um really
really big ingredient in Japanese cuisine, right, And this guy
was like, this little boy loves this dashi and I
want to know exactly what is making it so wonderful. So,
since he was a chemist, he took I think something
like twelve ms of dashi and boiled it down ten
(09:27):
of them, isolated some stuff. The first thing that came
out were some obvious ones that he clearly discarded is
not responsible for your mommy, because there were salts. He's like, no,
it's not that. It's not salt. We understand salt. It's
not salt. I know for effact it's not salt. What
else is in here? He starts sorting through it. Right, Well,
didn't he separate the dashi into its parts and then
(09:47):
break those down? Yeah? Okay, I just I jumped ahead
of step to make a terrible chemist. He's on he's
on kelp at this point, one of the ingredients. Okay.
And so with the kelp is where he found the
two salts and your right. He was like, well, I
know these flavors and they're not what I've been experiencing
on my tongue now. They're old news. So he looked
a little further and he found well, wait a minute,
(10:11):
what is this. It's glutamic acid. And he's like, maybe,
but glutamic acid has a sour taste, and that's weird, Like,
it can't be glutamic acid. It doesn't quite make sense.
So he added some more stuff, came up with a
chemical reaction, and what popped out on the other end
is what you and I call monosodium glutamate m s G.
(10:35):
And he figured out that it's not glutamic acid. It's
not the salt, but it's actually glutamate. But then he
figured out even further, it's like glutamate that doesn't make
any sense, like glutamate. Glutamate doesn't work. Then he realized
it's not the protein that's giving it the taste. It's
the amino acids that actually make up proteins that give
(10:55):
ou mommy its taste. Boom, So glutamate, I'm sorry, isn't
amino acid right? Right? Right? And that's one of the
things that gives you mommy's tastes. This is the first
thing that was discovered, um, to give you mommy it's taste. Yeah,
And that was the kelp. So you know, Dashi has
a different components. So he had a student. He said,
(11:16):
you know what, let me get that the dried tuna flakes. Um, yeah,
bonito delicious. There's different kinds, but bonita is definitely one
of them. Um. And he says, let me identify these components.
And what he found was something called uh, you want
to try that one and the sianate is that right? Yeah?
(11:37):
I think that is right? Man, it's a nucleic acid.
Like you say, yes, So he's like, boom, I've got
number two. And then in nineteen sixty another scientist named
Akira uh Kuni Knaka. He worked for Yamasa, the famous
soy saucier And now you're just showing off. He was,
um and he went on to work in pharmaceuticals. It
(11:59):
was interesting, oh the chemist. Yeah, but it's like you
work for soy sauce and then you go to work
for a pharmaceutical company. Right, I'm good at both things.
But you're right, it's all this chemistry. Um. So he said,
you know what, I can identify a third thing called guanilate.
It's another nucleotide in those shataki mushrooms you were talking about. Yeah,
(12:20):
and it's not like just bonito flakes, combo and saki
mushrooms are the only things that produce a mommy taste.
These are just the three things that those guys went
to town and isolated different stuff out of right. Yeah,
I always want to see Bonita apple bum when you
say Bonita tribe called quest After all these years, they
keep making reference, they keep making appearances in episodes lately.
(12:43):
Oh yeah, they have been. Huh you mentioned him in
Hula Hoops. Yeah, this one, you can't remember which one.
We talked about the scenario, what's the what's the what's
the scenario? You know what? My friend Justin whom you
also know, his mother actually left her wallet and els
a gun no way, And he even called me. He
(13:03):
was like, dude, guess what happened? My mother left a
wallet and elsa gundo. That's crazy. Yeah, it was pretty remarkable.
We should probably take a break, Yeah, and then we'll
talk a little bit more about the science of taste
right after this. So we have done an episode on
(13:36):
taste that was great. It was great called Taste and
How it Works from July right, highly recommended. Yeah, but
we're gonna go over a little bit more here. Well, yeah,
I think if we're gonna talk about mommy, we'd be
big jerks if we just assumed, you know everything there
is to know about. Yeah, we got to talk about
what's called the gustatory system. Okay, So, um, when we're
(13:57):
talking about taste specifically, that's separate it from flavor, which
we'll get to. But taste begins on the tongue, right,
and on the tongue you're gonna find what we like
to call taste buds or pepilla. The pa have taste
buds on them, right, Yes, there are three main types
of papia. You have the fun fungy form, mushroom shaped,
(14:20):
the foli eight. Those are the ridges and grooves at
the back of the tongue, and the circumvallate and those
are circular at the front front end of the tongue, right.
And then some papi a have a couple of taste buds.
Some have hundreds of taste buds. And then when you
look into the taste buds themselves, um, they have receptor cells.
(14:41):
And what's interesting is when you think about a taste buds,
you'd be like, oh, well, there's a salty taste bud,
sweet taste bud, ou mommy ou mommy, sweet, sour, bitter, right,
carbon dioxide. So that's not the case. As a matter
of fact, taste bud has different recept our selves, and
these different recept our selves can be tuned to accept
(15:02):
or sense different types of taste. Wasn't it the shape
if I remember correctly that, well, that was with the smell.
Smell and tasted closely related, and we should say that
the spoiler alert for the taste episode. We're not a
harm percent sure how we sense taste or smell um,
but yes, the the predominant theory is that the a
(15:25):
specific type of odorant or taste molecule will interact with
a specific type of receptor and when it does, the
chemical in that molecule, that food molecule um unlocks that
receptor and by doing that, it's translated into an electrical impulse. Boom.
So you chew your food up, gets spitty and saliva covered,
(15:49):
and it breaks it down, cut your tongue and that's
when that transduction. Uh, those electrical impulses are sent to
the n st the solitary tract of the brain, sorry,
the nucleus of the soliditary tract of the brain. Yeah,
that's where it all happens. That's when it puts all
these different tastes together and says delicious, I like this
(16:10):
or more to the point, and that's probably going to
kill you, so stop eating that. And like we said,
taste is different than flavor. Taste is just one aspect
of flavor for a food item or really anything to
have a flavor, It includes not just the taste but
also the smell, the side of it, the temperature of it,
(16:30):
how it feels, the firm is it a little too gelatinous? Um.
These are all things that your brain takes into account, um,
including things like memories that you form from having it before.
Cotton candy when I was a kid gives me great memories. Yeah,
So that plays a part in flavor exactly, like you
can like it releases some different aspect of it that
(16:54):
only you can experience that flavor. Yeah, Like if you
had a cotton candy jelly bean, it would conjure up
that memory and that would be part of the flavor
r experience yea, or if it's one of your past lives.
So that's kind of the science of taste and with
your mommy specifically. Um. Again, one of the things that
the West was having trouble with this accepting that ou
(17:15):
momi was a real thing was that there wasn't any
um what's called psychophysical evidence that oummi was its own taste. Right.
For a long time, they thought it was just a
component of salty taste because monosodium glutamate is a type
of salt, Right, It's a salt protein combination that makes
(17:36):
MSG and for many many years this was the only
um this is the only source of oummy taste. But
finally in the eighties, once they had the first international
symposium on New Mommy, it was a real thing. Um
the I'll bet it was too because it was in Hawaii,
and the Japanese and Americans love Hawaii, so I bet
(17:58):
everybody was partying down there. They started to do studies
in the early eighties and they found oh, actually no,
there are specific receptor cells on the human tongue. And
it turns out not just in human tongues, but mostly
human tongues that are designed or geared towards accepting we're
sensing umami tastes. That's right. Those are the g protein
(18:20):
coupled receptors g pc rs, and that is for sweet, bitter,
and umami and uh, sour and salty those a little different.
Those sort of flow through ion channels, which is way
over my head, to be honest. Well, it's just like
if a molecule is a positive charge of a negative charge.
If it's if it's a positive ion it has positive charge,
(18:41):
it's not gonna make it through all sorts of the channels.
It's only gonna make it through positive channels. It's not
it's simple, I know, but as far as relating that
to a taste, it's just sort of I can think
of his manage. Well that's the whole thing. It's like
you said, it's like it's like your brain just turns advantage.
It's transduction is taking in a chemical and turning it
into an electrical charge. I just think that's endlessly fascinating.
(19:05):
Oh sure, the senses and how they work, it's like
it's amazing, But not just that electricity an electric electrical generation,
like you remember that episode Electricity maybe one of our
best if you ask me. Agreed, alright, So what way,
what we have here are three kinds of receptor cells
that they know are h that that respond to this
(19:25):
combination that makes up what MSG is. I'm sorry, what
UMMI is. It's that the gwenny late and the MSG.
And what they think is that they actually hold on
to these these compounds hold on longer, which is why
you get these interesting combinations. When you have like, uh,
(19:47):
cheese with an apple or cheese on an apple pie.
It takes sweet and like doesn't just make it sweeter,
it makes it like sweet in a different way right exactly. Um.
And the same thing again when when you mixed together
different types of either amino acids or nucleic acids that
create a new mommy taste, they magnify this ummmy nous
(20:08):
of this is meatiness of the whole thing. And um
also with I believe salty too, Oh mommy and salty
mixed together. Um. The fact that it it hangs onto
that that molecule longer and it just leaves that charge going.
Then that sweet can come and go, but it's it's
affected by it. Food science is so interesting, it is.
(20:31):
And we're gonna talk a little more about food science
and evolution right after this. All right, So here's one
(20:53):
thing I didn't get, and I reread this a few times.
I get the first part of this, which is as follows,
is that people have long thought that tastes had a
part in evolution and that we were just wired to
know that if something sweet is probably okay to eat
and that will give us nutrition, something really bitter may
be dangerous to eat, that might be poisonous. And of
(21:15):
course there's exceptions to all of this. Those are pretty
good general rules when it comes to uh evolution. Right,
that that was the evolution explanation for the sense of taste, right, yeah,
But what I don't get and is where in here
does it explain the evolutionary uh method of umami? Like
what role it played? I got this, you're ready? Well,
(21:37):
is it this part about cooking? Yes? Oh it was
very poorly stated, it really was. But it's really interesting
that what you realize this that so you said that
ou momi is is like one of the newer tastes
or something like that, it actually is. Yeah, they couldn't
figure out like what part did this have an evolution? No,
but even before that, like if you look at it
evolutionarily speaking, it's it's actually very old. Supposedly the receptors
(22:02):
are very old, like four million years old or something
like that. But the idea that we can taste you mommy,
or us tasting you mommy is very actually fairly recent,
because ou mommy is released by cooking food. Like if
you eat a bunch of raw hamburger, that's that's not
gonna be umami tasting. It's not gonna taste very good.
(22:25):
But you cook that hamburger and you have molecularly changed
its composition. You've unlocked some of the proteins into its
constituent amino acids, and all of a sudden, you've got
umami taste. It's like a caramelizing an onion is completely
different than the taste of a raw onion or even
a just regular grilled onion. Yeah, and the big mystery
(22:48):
of all this, evolutionarily speaking, is that what you're gaining
or one of the biggest sources of umami taste is glutamate.
Well that's great, but the human body produces tons of glutamate,
so it wouldn't make sense that we would have a
taste receptor to find it in nature because we got
enough in our body. Well, you need other essential amino acids.
And if it figures that the best way to get
(23:11):
amino acids is to cook or ferment food, you want,
you need you need fire because amino acids can be
bound to proteins and we don't absorb them as well,
or our body spends a lot more energy of breaking
them down and digesting them than if we cook them
or if we ferment them. So man invent fire, man
(23:31):
starts to cook food, man advances more rapidly. Yes, that's
one of the ideas that um why our brain developed
as well as it did, or we'd be came as
intelligent as we did was from cooking food. So we
were able to um break down our food a lot
more easily and gain from it, absorb it, and um
(23:51):
basically grow huge brains that it came from cooking. And
where where do we get O mommy taste from cooked
or fermented food where these proteins have been broken down
into much more easily absorbed amino acid constituents. Man, I
like that. I agree. I feel like I just made
it confusing, though, did it come across No, it's it's
totally makes sense. We learned how to cook food and
(24:14):
that put us at the head of the evolutionary ladder.
Right and OUMMI tastes comes from cooked or for many food? Yeah,
very clear? Uh? What is not clear or maybe it
is clear? Is MSG bad for you? A lot of
people say it makes me dizzy, or it makes my
heart flutter or or you know the MSG crash after
(24:35):
you go the Chinese food buffet. Well, there's actually something
called Chinese food syndrome. Not not true. Apparently it's a myth,
supposedly culturally bound syndrome where like very few other cultures
outside of the United States or the West even think
of the idea that MSG can make you sick, and
(24:56):
that it's apparently a psycho somatic reaction where you expect
MSG is going to make you sick, so you get sick. Yep,
that's one explanation. Maybe your body or our bodies are
just different in how we process and metabolize MSG, or
maybe you have oded a little bit too much of
anything could be a bad thing, right, Uh, it could
(25:19):
be all these things. But what science is saying is
there's no evidence that MSG is bad for you quote
unquote right, And apparently study after study found that people
that that MSG doesn't cause these things. Yeah, it's it's weird,
So get off the couch, lazy, you're just looking for
excuse to not cut the grass. And so MSG again,
(25:42):
it has kind of a bad has kind of a
bad rap here in the US, but it's everywhere. And
it was actually one of the first things that Um, yeah,
professor Akita Um did was he figured out a way
to patent extra thing monosoda imglutamate from wheat, which is
(26:03):
where it sound much more abundantly than in like kelp,
and package it into a seasoning, and he he had
no ill will. He's like, this is great. This can
make that boring dish like taste better that healthy boring
dish tastes better. So it's not it's ironic then that
people think it's bad for you, when in fact, when
he packaged it, he was like, this is gonna be
(26:23):
good for you. It's gonna make this thing that's good
for you taste even better and our country is going
to be very healthy. Right. Yeah, but it's hard to find,
he said. It wasn't everything, but it's disguised and ingredients. Yeah,
against stealthily because MSG has a bad rap here in
the West. Yeah, they should just put MSG right. They do.
Sometimes for the most part, though, they will call it
(26:43):
something like hydrolyzed wheat protein because remember it can be
extracted from wheat um. Sometimes they'll call it just natural flavors, yeah,
because all these things are natural. What else texturized vegetable protein,
autolized yeast extract right, uh yeah, or just natural flavors.
So if you see that, that can be a lot
(27:05):
of things though, but just natural flavors, you don't know
what you're eating. But there are some upsides to using
this MSG. It's actually it actually can be used in
the way that Professor A. Keda envisioned it, which is
taking stuff and making it slightly healthier. Actually, when you
have UM, when you use certain like a potassium chloride
(27:28):
rather than sodium chloride to make MSG, you can actually
replace the sodium in UM a dish. So if you
have a sodium problem, you can use some of this stuff. Hey,
how about that, Uh, low fat food that didn't taste
so good? A little MSG it tastes better, right, Although
(27:48):
recent medical research suggests that you should be not eating
low fat food, that regular fat food is not bad
for you. Or hey, old person, you don't taste so
good anymore and need medication that even dampens that. Right,
Why don't you throw some MSG on there? Why why
don't you back to life? You know? Yes, so chuck um.
(28:12):
Whether MSG is a bad rap or not, it's definitely
all over the place. Uh, and it is making things
taste good in my opinion, Moms here to stay it is.
But there's other ways to to get an umami flavor
out of food. And this this article actually has some
helpful tips for your cooking. If you want to go
and cook and get a umami taste. Have you ever
(28:35):
been to umami Burger? No? I haven't. It sounds awesome,
it's good. I like it. It sounds like you can
make one at home with some mushrooms. Yeah. Umami Burger
is a chain. Uh. I don't know where they have them,
but I had in Los Angeles and they add a
powdered mushroom and seaweed to the beef with little soy sauce.
You don't even know what you're eating except that it
(28:56):
tastes good. You know, you're like, hmm, detect the mushroom
and seaweed in this burger, all right, it's just umami
flavored um And you know it's interesting. There's this uh
I think it's called like Umami Information dot Com or
something like that, really interesting site. But they point out
that um while you associate umami with Asian cooking, it's
(29:22):
actually found all over the world, like in Italy with
tomato sauces and catch up in the United States. Uh,
in cheeses in Europe. Um. In West Africa they have
something called um oh what is it called sambara. I
think it's kind of like a miso in West Africa
(29:42):
that sounds kind of delicious. Sombala that sounds good, just
like the sounds of it exactly. So it's it's interesting
that like people have been cooking with ou mommy stuff
long before we ever knew the word U mommy um.
And it's been around the world too. Uh, carmelzing onions
we mentioned in like butter nothing better? Um what else? Um?
(30:06):
You can put parmesan cheese rinds into a super stew
and it'll o mommy. That thing up. That's a good one.
If you're making a stock, use bones of an animal
and suppose against that kind of thing. The guy who
invented veal stock is reputed to have believed that there
was a fifth taste that had yet been unidentified back
(30:28):
in the nineteenth century. He's like, I just boiled this calf.
He's like that there's something going on here besides the
Big four. Wow, nobody believed. Uh. If you're cooking with mushrooms,
and I recommend this with all vegetables, roast those things
a little bit first. It brings out all kinds of
flavors and it makes your brain bigger. Like if you
(30:48):
if you got to make an omelet, don't just throw
raw peppers and stuff in there, cook that stuff up
a little bit on the side, then add that to
the egg mixture. It makes the world of difference. You know,
everybody should watch Internet Roundup just just to get an
idea of what like our little gesticulations are. Like when
(31:10):
you're talking about like cooking peppers on the side and
throw them in there, like just the you're making very
cute little hand gestures over there. We'll always joke with
Emily that I'm gonna open an omelet stand on the
beach one day. It's my retirement job. She's like, why
an omelets stand on the beach. I was like, because
no one's ever done it. No, they really haven't you
ever go to the beach. You're laying there in the
hot sun. Like I could use an omelet every time.
(31:32):
I think. I just want my retirement job to be
very slow paced and not busy, and you'll get to
eat omelets. You got anything else? Um, cooking with wine
is a good one too, Yeah, that's o Momi City.
Um No, just go forth and try O mommy ng
up your dishes and you will be happy. You will
(31:53):
be happy. It's it'll be an indefinable quality, but you'll
know it's you, mommy. Yes, should be something about it.
I can't put my finger on it. You'll say this
stuff is ouh my, which again means delicious roughly in Japanese.
If you want to know more about ouh mommy, you
(32:13):
can type that word in the search bart how stuff
works dot com. Uh. And since I said, oh mommy,
it's time again for a listener mail, I'm just gonna
call this a nice, simple thank you from a listener.
Those are nice. Uh, sometimes it is nice. You know.
It's for Meredith from Granite Falls, Minnesota, and she's just
(32:34):
thanking us because she has a boring summer job. She said,
I work at a hospital and I scan a bunch
of old files into an external hard drive. That's what
I do is I remove a lot of staples, stare
at the scanner, and a wait works to be done.
I'll or and over. Yeah. Can you imagine there? It's like, oh,
we need to ditchitize all these records. Let's hire someone
(32:55):
to do that. Yeah. So God bless you Meredith for
doing that. I found listening to eight hours of music
just wasn't doing the trick anymore. Then I discovered the
wonderful world of podcasts, and you guys are my all
time Thames. You guys are so funny and I love
all the dumb jokes you make. I don't know if
they're dumb. I think like groundbreaking is a dog way. Yeah. Uh.
(33:17):
They really make my day, guys. And even if I
don't understand all the tangents you go off on because
I'm only twenty one and don't understand most of these
references you make the movies or pop culture things from
decades gone by, I still enjoyed that the podcast is
more of a conversation between you guys than just strictly
reading from a script. Oh yeah, we don't even have
a script. Clearly, that would be the worst script ever.
(33:39):
M One of these days I'll have a real story
to share directly related to a recent show. But for now,
I just want to say thank you so much and
keep up the amazing work that is best wishes from Meredith. Meredith,
thank you. And she's a PostScript that says, I absolutely
love it when Josh Josh calls Chuckers. Don't even know why.
I just mad, some smile, we nice and it just
(34:01):
has a ring. Suckers it's a fun word. It is.
It's like ou mommy said, mommy a watch. I wonder
how many times I don't know if we should have
an umami counter on the website. You know, yeah, it
would be cool. I don't know if we are familiar
with the technology that could do that, though, And at
the end it just turns into a big pile of
(34:23):
salty dried fish cuts. I seriously am making some top
notch me so soup. I've been inspired too. You've gotten
pretty good everything. Yeah, yeah, I've gotten pretty good at
um hot and sour soup. But I make it from
a mix and just add some stuff to it. This
I'm going to make from like dashi and miso from scratch. Well,
(34:45):
I'm not gonna like ferment the soybeans or anything like that.
But you're gonna make your own dashi. No, I'm gonna
buy dashi. You should make your own dashi. I'm not
gonna make my own doshi. You know how bad my
apartment would smell if I like fermented and then boiled
down fish just to make the stock. Need it crazy?
You need a spice kitchen. I do need a spice kitchen,
now that you mentioned it, um No, but I will
(35:06):
let you know how the miso soup turns out. Okay.
If you want to get in touch with us, you
can tweet to us at s Y s K podcast.
You can join us on Facebook, dot com, slash stuff
you Should Know. You can send us an email, the
Stuff Podcast, the house, Stuff Works dot com, and as always,
join us at our home on the web, Stuff you
Should Know dot com For more on this and thousands
(35:32):
of other topics because it how stuff Works. Dot com
Stuff You Should Know News
Hosts And Creators
Chuck Bryant
Josh Clark
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