Welcome to the summary page for FabulousFusionFood's Cook's Guide entry for Umami along with all the recipes employing Umami presented on this site, with 1213 recipes in total.

This is a continuation of an entire series of pages that will, I hope, allow my visitors to better navigate this site. As well as displaying recipes by name, country and region of origin I am now planning a whole series of pages where recipes can be located by meal type and main ingredient. This page gives a listing of all the Umami recipes added to this site.

These recipes, all contain Umami as a major wild food ingredient.

Umami (旨み、旨味、うまみ) is a Japanese word for one of the five basic taste sensed by specialised receptor cells present on the human tongue (along with salt, sweet, sour and bitter). mami is a Japanese word meaning "savory" or "meaty" and thus applies to the sensation of savouriness — specifically, to the detection of glutamates, which are especially common in meats, cheese and other protein-heavy foods. The action of umami receptors explains why foods treated with monosodium glutamate (MSG) often taste fuller.

Umami is commonly found in fish, especially anchovies and this explains why anchovy or various fish sauces of various kinds are frequent additions to foods. This explains why Romans were so fond of their fish sauces and why fish sauces are so important in many southeast Asian dishes. Umami is also a feature of miso pastes and many mushrooms. Tomatoes are also high in umami, which may explain why tomato-based sauces are so popular.