Smell and taste

The twenty-sixth entry is de sabor salgado, and the English word for it, « savoury », does a good deal more work than the Portuguese phrase. It is first of all the opposite of « sweet », and that one opposition organises a whole kitchen: savoury pastry against sweet pastry, a savoury tart, the savoury course. It is not a synonym of « salty », and that is the trap, because salgado names salt while « savoury » does not: a mushroom broth with no salt in it at all is savoury. The same breadth is why « savoury » has become the usual English rendering of the entry that follows, o umami. The negative is where a reader comes unstuck. « Unsavoury » ought by its shape to mean bland, or unpleasant to eat, and it means nothing of the kind. An unsavoury character is disreputable, an unsavoury business is one nobody wants looked into, and neither has been tasted by anyone; the word has left the table entirely. Note the spelling as well: British writing keeps the u in « savoury », as it does in « flavour », and American writing drops it.