The flavor of food can be enhanced by combining chemicals known to trigger umami taste receptors with nucleotides—building blocks of DNA and RNA—triggering an effect called umami synergy.

How science came to understand umami

Before Dr. Kikunae Ikeda sat down in 1907 and pondered the taste of dashi, scientists typically agreed upon four types of taste: sweet, salty, bitter, and sour. He boiled 90 pounds of kelp into a resin that he then stripped of different compounds until he was left with a single ounce of brown crystals. Testing later revealed these crystals were glutamate, an amino acid and one of the protein's building blocks.

MSG was first isolated from seaweed in Japan in 1908

The compound monosodium glutamate has been identified in dairy, meats and vegetables, and provides an "umami"—Japanese for "tasty"—flavor to food. Studies in the late 1960s characterized MSG as harmful, but only when testing doses hundreds of times greater than what would be consumed in a typical diet.

Monosodium glutamate is a sodium salt form of a naturally occurring amino acid

Monosodium glutamate myths originate from a 1968 letter to the New England Journal of Medicine, in which unpleasant symptoms after eating Chinese food were dubbed Chinese restaurant syndrome without medical data. Subsequent studies show this savory flavor enhancer—found in tomatoes, mushrooms, and other foods—is safe in moderation.

The research that led to sour

Scientists are trying to figure out if there are unique receptors that respond to the molecules that make up flavors we associate with calcium, blood, batteries, and other items that often escape dinner menus. Taste researcher Dr. Danielle Reed says the minimum evidence for a taste category typically involves identifying dedicated receptors and then removing them to show the taste vanishes.

Taste buds have evolved to fill a wide variety of functions

Taste buds do more than let you experience your favorite food. These peripheral organs can sense the chemical makeup, potential toxicity, and fleeting experience of flavor, giving the body a chance to respond to undesirable chemicals or tell the brain that you should reach for another scoop.

Understanding the biochemistry of ingredients and taste can improve flavor and texture

Keeping eggs at room temperature produces smoother batters when baking, and doing the same with tomatoes helps prevent a mealy, granular mouthfeel. Salting meat a day before gives more time for proteins to break down, improving flavor and tenderness, while cooking vegetables in well-salted water can lock in nutrients and color.

Many parts of the body, including the testicles, have bitter, sweet, and umami receptors

Taste receptors—the tiny cells that report the chemical makeup of external stimuli to the brain—in the testicles don't "taste" in the same way as the gustatory ones you use to determine if there's enough sugar in your tea. Research suggests that these "teste" receptors can sense bitter, sweet, and umami compounds and use that chemical input to control physiological processes or (literally) change direction. (Some users may experience a paywall.)

Ammonium may be the sixth basic taste

Researchers have proposed various candidates for the sixth official taste, including "fat." But research published in 2023 posits that ammonium should be considered the sixth taste since they found humans can apparently detect ammonium chloride, which the scientists describe as "bitter, salty, and a little sour." Detecting ammonia could be a survival mechanism to help detect when certain foods, including seafood, are no longer safe to eat. The work hinged on experiments with human cells exposed to ammonium chloride as well as rodent research.

A collection of molecular gastronomy techniques, from flavored air to turning oils into powder

Soy lecithin can be blended with flavored mixtures, such as herbs and Parmesan, to produce edible bubbles, which can be frozen into a solid foam. Maltodextrin can be combined with liquid fats in a food processor to create light, flavorful powders.

Miracle berries make things that normally taste acidic or sour, such as lemons, taste sweet, like sugar-coated candy, by binding a special protein called miraculin to taste buds.

The importance of volatile aroma compounds in the flavor quality of food

Processes such as air movement and heating cause food to lose aroma molecules, which studies have shown play a major role in our sense of taste. While losing these molecules to the environment leaves fewer to be processed during consumption to intensify flavor, it can also produce previously nonexistent aroma compounds or release previously trapped ones, altering or enhancing the food's flavor.

How texture affects taste

Texture is the brain's interpretation of several sensations, including pressure, as registered by our teeth, tongue, and finger tips, and sound, as recorded by our ears. Texture also speaks to food particle sizes—smaller than 35 microns contributes to the sensation of creamy—and the balance between flavor and mouth time, such as the crunch of a crispy chip or the bounce of a chewy caramel.

Our sense of smell affects what foods taste like and how we perceive it

Scent stimulates our olfactory sensor neurons high in the nasal cavity, and the brain attaches labels to those scents. But when we eat, chemicals from the foods travel from our mouths and throat to those neurons. We have roughly 400 odor receptors, and they can be used to decipher more than 10,000 different odors (or more than one trillion by some calculations), including the nuances of different foods.

Barbecue relies on a unique scientific equation

Barbecue's distinct flavor starts with an interaction between the heat source and food, which creates a Maillard Reaction—better known to diners as those crunchy, caramelized bits on the outside.

Strands of DNA can act as biochemical Velcro and fasten two molecules together because the complementary bases that make up DNA strands bond together consistently.

Explaining why salt should be used to season food early in the cooking process

Experiments involving the same dishes, with salt added at the start of cooking versus at the end, have been shown to yield drastically different taste outcomes because salt takes time to diffuse into foods, particularly vegetables, whose cells are surrounded by cellular membranes and walls. Salting at the end will produce a concentrated surface coating, rather than even seasoning.

Fat is proposed as a candidate sixth basic taste

Oleogustus is Latin for "a taste for fat," and researchers proposed in 2015 that it should be accepted as the sixth basic taste. This article teases apart exactly what it would take to officially be considered the sixth taste and why researchers think the fat taste may be a strong candidate.

Discover the chemistry behind smoking foods, including the types of smoking and the source of smoking flavors and colors.

Neural replays in mice help explain food aversions

Princeton University scientists published research in 2025 analyzing how mice learn to associate certain foods or flavors with feeling ill—even when there’s a time gap between eating something and feeling sick. The work, performed with grape Kool-Aid and injections of a substance that made mice sick, traced the literal “gut reaction” of how gut distress signals are linked to neural replays of what the mouse ate.

These cells 'taste' danger, trigger immune responses

Taste receptor-coated tuft cells are found throughout the body, where they communicate with and take part in a growing list of biological processes. In the intestines, these taste receptor-studded cells can sense byproducts of parasite metabolisms. This causes the taste receptors to release chemicals that alert the immune system, order nearby goblet cells to produce mucus, and trigger muscle contractions in attempts to launch the parasites from the intestines.

How bitter taste receptors help guard against infection

Receptors for "bitter" tastes evolved to detect potentially harmful plant chemicals, such as nicotine. The receptors also trigger bacteria-fighting responses, including waving hairlike projections to bat away bacteria, ordering the release of bacteria-killing nitric oxide, and calling for antimicrobial protein reinforcements.

Babies taste food in the womb via amniotic fluid, and it may influence future taste buds.

The history of molecular gastronomy, from thickening yolks with alcohol to making art with food

Before understanding why they worked, humans used scientific principles, including designing solutions and analyzing outcomes, to develop preservation methods like curing meat and fermenting vegetables. By the 20th century, the application of industrialized food preparation to smaller kitchens set the stage for the subdiscipline of food science.

Humans have taste receptors throughout the body, including in the testes and lungs, but we don't taste what they detect because those areas lack taste buds.

Stacking nucleotide molecules like toy blocks helps build DNA's structure

Each nucleotide is made up of a sugar—deoxyribose—a phosphate group, and one of four bases that contain nitrogen. Like building a two-tone, spiral staircase from the ground up, nucleotides are linked one on top of another so that sugars and phosphates alternate. The twisted strands are held together by hydrogen bonds between base pairs.

Cats have a mutation that prevents them from tasting sweetness, and goldfish rank among the world's supertasters.

The five most common chemicals found in modern food

Most modern processed foods rely on a number of preservatives to stay fresh from production to our plates. The most common include citric acid (preservative and flavor), sodium benzoate (preservative), xanthan gum (thickening and stabilizing), carrageenan (thickening), and red dyes 3 and 4 (for color).

A timeline of the science of taste discoveries

The tongue is made up of four types of papillae—elevated, nipple-like projections that give the organ its rough texture. In the early 1900s, initial research into the tongue's varying taste sensitivity led to a misleading map of the tongue and its taste regions. Over the decades, researchers fleshed out five distinct tastes (and more recently, a sixth).

Explore a list of 12 recipes incorporating techniques from molecular gastronomy

The recipes include popcorn shooters that taste like liquid caramel corn, almost-instant soft serve made by blending frozen fruit with sugar and fromage blanc, a fusion of fried rice and pizza, and skewered fruit coated in a broiled, glossy meringue.

Theories vary on why we love to eat spicy food—even when it hurts.

A delicious flavor used to be made from a beaver’s butt

Love vanilla-flavored foods? Well, it was once made from castoreum - a yellowish exudate from the castor sacs of mature beavers. And the FDA regards castoreum as “natural flavoring."

Octopuses have taste receptors along their tentacles

Octopus suction cups are filled with modified sensory receptors that can bind with a greater variety of materials and transport a wider array of information, such as flavor, from tactile stimuli. These structures allow the animal to search for food as it crawls the ocean floor.

Bacteria use chemical signals to communicate and coordinate with one another

Through a system called quorum sensing, bacteria produce and absorb compounds from their environment to identify allies or competitors and adjust their behavior accordingly. Some bacteria produce food-digesting enzymes only in the presence of similar bacteria, thereby preventing competitors from consuming their meal.

Microbes are essential to creating the many varieties of cheese, influencing texture and taste

Microbes break down proteins and fats and produce compounds with distinct tastes. These microbes can include bacteria (like the one used to give Swiss its trademark holes), molds (like the ones that give blue cheese its distinctive veining), and countless other tiny organisms.

Scent is a stronger memory trigger than sight

Smell is imbued with more emotion than visual memories, and research indicates that smell triggers a significantly greater effect on amygdala activation. Scientists believe these powerful responses occur partly because smell signals bypass the thalamus and go directly to the amygdala and hippocampus, brain areas involved in emotion and memory.

DNA may serve as a flame retardant by self-extinguishing some burning materials

When DNA burns, phosphate groups release phosphoric acid, and nitrogenous bases release ammonia. These molecules, along with the sugar in DNA's backbone, shift the combustion reaction toward the formation of intumescent char. This puffy, carbon-rich layer protects open flames from burning the material beneath.

Explore the chemical compounds found in fireworks

Besides the various salts and metals used to produce fireworks colors, shells are also filled with gunpowder and oxidizers to help fuel and accelerate reactions. Chlorates help strengthen colors, while dextrin, a starch, helps hold mixtures together.