Umami

Umami /uːˈmɑːmi/, a savory taste,^[1][2][3] is one of the five basic tastes, together with sweet, sour, bitter, and salty.  

Umami is a loanword from the Japanese umami (うま味^?) meaning "pleasant savory taste".^[4]
This particular writing was chosen by Professor Kikunae Ikeda from umai (うまい) "delicious" and mi (味) "taste". The kanji 旨味 are used for a more general meaning to describe a food as delicious.

The human tongue has receptors for L-glutamate, which is the source of umami flavor. As such, scientists consider umami to be distinct from saltiness.^[5]

Glutamate has a long history in cooking.^[13] Fermented fish sauces (garum), rich in glutamate, were already used in ancient Rome.^[14] Umami was not properly identified until 1908 by Kikunae Ikeda,^[16] a professor of the Tokyo Imperial University. He found that glutamate was responsible for the palatability of the broth from kombu seaweed. He noticed that the taste of kombu dashi was distinct from sweet, sour, bitter and salty and named it umami.

Umami has a mild but lasting aftertaste difficult to describe. It induces salivation and a sensation of furriness on the tongue, stimulating the throat, the roof and the back of the mouth (for review Yamaguchi, 1998).^[19][20]

Japanese dashi gives a very pure umami taste sensation.

Umami taste is common to foods that contain high levels of L-glutamate, IMP and GMP, most notably in fish, shellfish, cured meats, vegetables (e.g., mushrooms, ripe tomatoes, Chinese cabbage, spinach, celery, etc.) or green tea, and fermented and aged products (e.g., cheeses, shrimp pastes, soy sauce, etc.).^[25]