Ancient flavor enhancer

The Jakarta Post ,  Jakarta   |  Thu, 10/04/2007 8:15 AM  |  Opinion

Glutamate as a substance to enhance food flavor has been used by Eastern people for thousands of years. In Japan kombu seaweed (Laminaria japonica) was added to broth to make it tastier. The Japanese at that time were unaware that kombu contained glutamate as a flavor enhancer.

In my family, with my father born in Makassar in 1888, we have used coconut milk and oil, candlenuts, and salted fish and shrimp paste. Our cooking and cakes are based on ancestral recipes.

All the foods are piquant and tasty, indicating that this flavor has been familiar to Makassar people for a long time.

In the West, the cooks are proud of their soups containing mushrooms, tomatoes and asparagus, but once had no idea that glutamate could be found in vegetables, milk, eggs, fish and other ingredients.

It was Kikunae Ikeda of Tokyo Imperial University who discovered the link between glutamate and kombu. This ""fifth taste,"" known as yumani, amazed the world in 1908.

Andrew G. Ebert, Chairman of the International Glutamate Technical Committee in Washington D.C., is now preparing for the centenary of the discovery of yumami as the embryo of monosodium glutamate (MSG).

This is as was recently reported by Sunarto Prawirosujanto, general chairman of the Indonesian Monosodium Glutamate and Glutamic Acid Manufacturers Association, following the 41st annual meeting of IGTC in Taiwan.

The Indonesian manufacturers association, as a member of the international body, will participate in the centenary of the important event by disseminating wider information on the safety of MSG as a food flavor enhancer. Even after 100 years, the safety is doubted by intellectual circles with inadequate knowledge of MSG.

LIDWINA MARIA GOMULYA
Jakarta

Copyright © 2008 The Jakarta Post - PT Bina Media Tenggara. All Rights Reserved.