Dried shiitake

Guanylate meets glutamate: the vegan dashi that beats the other on paper.

Both are concentrated amino acid. Use less of each than you think.

Guanylate plus glutamate; two dull ingredients making one loud broth.

Guanylate in the soaking water is what the melon actually tastes of.

Two dried, aged umami sources; the soaking liquid and the wine taste related.

The soaking liquid is stock already. Cut it or the dish tastes muddy.

Fat needs glutamate, and this brings guanylate as well. Kombu is louder; this is meatier.

Cabbage water dilutes; the mushroom liquor pays it straight back.

Two thickened umamis. Any third one and the dish goes flat-savoury.

Dried mushroom depth against a leaf that supplies bitterness but very little savour.

Anethole is the one aromatic loud enough to be heard over guanylate.

Fermented funk plus dried funk. Salty, black, and utterly unsubtle.

Land and sea, both dehydrated. The pantry version of a stock pot.

One brings the umami, the other brings the bite. Neither does both.

Dried mushroom depth against a stem that has almost none of its own.

Marrow melts, mushroom liquor seasons it. Nothing else needed.

A handful in the braise and the beef reads two hours older than it is.

Cooked-milk lactones against lenthionine sulfur; the mushroom puts umami where sugar would go.

Cocoa pyrazines against lenthionine sulfur. A pinch in the braise deepens the colour.

Roasted and dehydrated on both sides: pyrazines twice, from different kingdoms.

Roast pyrazines plus guanylate. Brew them together and you have a very odd dashi.