The Food Lab: Better Home Cooking Through Science

a sharp, salty, savory flavor that the Brits like to
spread on toast in the morning. On toast, it’s an
acquired taste to be sure, but there’s a lot of
potential hiding in that little bottle. Made from a by-
product of alcohol production, it’s essentially
concentrated yeast proteins, rich in both salt and
glutamates. Soy sauce is made from fermented
soybeans and acquires high levels of glutamates
from both the amino-acid-rich soybeans themselves
and the yeast and bacteria used to ferment them into
the savory sauce. Anchovies and many other small
oily fish are naturally rich in glutamates, and salting
and aging them increases their concentration. Even
many traditional recipes for rich meat-based stews
will call for a few anchovies to help boost the dish’s
savory qualities.
There are many other ingredients that have high
levels of glutamates—Worcestershire sauce,
Parmigiano-Reggiano, powdered dashi (a Japanese
broth made with sea kelp and bonito), to name a few
—but they all have pretty strong flavor profiles. My
three umami bombs are the only ones I know of that
can increase meatiness while blending into the
background, making the natural flavors of meat
stronger without imposing their own will on the dish.
But which one to use? I made several batches of
turkey burgers incorporating the ingredients
directly into the grind. Turns out that adding all
three together is exponentially more potent in
triggering our meatiness-detectors than using any