KUALA LUMPUR, Jan. 30 -- They say you need to spice up your life when things get tedious. Yet so many of us can't handle fiery foods, no?

A smidgen of sambal would make one friend begin to perspire; imagine if he had to polish off an entire bowl of red hot Korean noodles?

Perhaps what our taste buds require isn't flames but more flavour. And I think of what we so often associate with umami - that fifth element, that once missing taste that the Japanese pinned down scientifically.

The man in question was Kikunae Ikeda, a professor of the Tokyo Imperial University. In 1908, Prof. Ikeda identified glutamate as the source of savouriness of a kombu dashi broth.

That ineffable palatability was a clearly different taste than what was already...