Umami Paste

The world's first Umami paste from Italy

Taste #5 Umami paste is a savory seasoning paste from Italy based on a recipe by Laura Santtini. Anchovies, porcini mushrooms, black olives, Parmigiano Reggiano, and balsamic vinegar combine the fifth taste in a 70g tube. A squeeze adds depth to sauces and soups.

Umami paste Taste #5 is an Italian seasoning paste that Laura Santtini launched in 2009 as the world's first umami paste. Inside the aluminum tube is a dark, salty, velvety paste made from tomato paste, garlic, anchovies, black olives, balsamic vinegar, porcini mushrooms, Parmigiano Reggiano DOP, and olive oil—all ingredients that naturally carry a savory flavor.

The fifth taste alongside sweet, sour, salty, and bitter

Umami is the savory basic taste described and named by the Japanese chemist Kikunae Ikeda in 1908 after studying seaweed broth.

Our tongues have specific receptors for it, and everyone recognizes the sensation it reports: the depth of a long-simmered meat broth, the piquancy of aged Parmesan, the lingering finish of an anchovy. Laura has gathered exactly the ingredients that contain this taste for her paste, concentrating them into a seasoning you can dose just like tomato paste.

The paste tastes savory, salty, and mushroomy right off the spoon, followed by the sweetness of balsamic vinegar and finally the nuttiness of the Parmigiano. Tasted raw, it is intense—it only truly fulfills its purpose in a hot dish.

A squeeze for sugo, soup, and braises

The paste is a seasoning, not a spread: it is added to dishes in small amounts and develops its flavor when heated.

Stir it into red sauces, minced meat, stews, or the mixture for meatballs and burgers. When deglazing with wine or broth, a squeeze gives the sauce body, and you can rub it onto meat or fish before cooking—mixed with olive oil, red wine, and a sprig of rosemary, it becomes a marinade for the grill. You can find more inspiration in our selection of pasta, risotto, and sugo.

A cheese sauce for macaroni also benefits from half a teaspoon: it makes it savory, robust, and full-bodied without tasting like fish.

It tastes particularly good with hot, drained pasta, topped with chopped fresh tomatoes, torn arugula and basil, a little lemon zest, and a drizzle of olive oil. With tagliatelle with porcini mushrooms, the paste picks up on its own mushroom aroma. The anchovies provide salt—3.5g per 100g according to the nutritional information—which is why you should only add extra salt at the very end.

After opening, the tube belongs in the refrigerator, where it will keep for about a month. The paste is not suitable for vegetarians due to the anchovies, and it also contains milk from the Parmigiano—both are listed as allergens in the ingredients list.

Laura Santtini and her Taste #5

Laura Santtini is a restaurateur and cookbook author who has been known as the "Umami Queen" since 2009, as her paste was the first of its kind.

From 2002 to 2008, she ran the family restaurant Santini in London's Belgravia district, which her father Gino Santini had opened in 1984. Cookbooks followed: "Easy Tasty Italian" won the Jeremy Round Award from the British Guild of Food Writers for best debut in 2010, and "At Home with Umami" was published in 2015. Laura says the idea behind the paste was to capture the umami of her Italian heritage in a tube.

The seasoning paste is produced in Italy according to her recipe. If you prefer something more tomatoey and milder, reach for its sweeter sister, Bomba tomato paste. Tasted side by side, the difference between anchovy and grape must is a small lesson in seasoning.