I'm catching up on a small fraction of the piles of magazines littering my office and had the strange experience of seeing the same new word in both the New Yorker and the New York Times -- umami. In the March 10th New Yorker it's in a book review of Perfumes: The Guide, which is more about the language of describing scents, especially in wine tasting. In the NY Times it's in a March 5th article about MSG which is currently the second most popular article to email. And what is umami? According to dictionary.com, it is:
A taste that is characteristic of monosodium glutamate and is
associated with meats and other high-protein foods. It is sometimes
considered to be a fifth basic taste along with sweet, sour, salty, and
bitter
or
a taste sensation that is meaty or savory and is produced by several amino acids and nucleotides (as aspartate, inosinate, and glutamate)
It's strange to see the same unfamiliar word twice in one day. Lattice of coincidence.
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