Miso is a thick, salty paste made from soybeans that have been left to ferment, usually with rice or barley and a mould culture. It is a basic ingredient in Japanese cooking. You dissolve a spoonful in hot water with tofu and seaweed to make miso soup, or you rub it on fish or aubergine before grilling. The colour tells you a lot: white miso (白味噌) is milder and a little sweet, red or dark miso is stronger and saltier. In English it is an uncountable noun — 'add some miso', not 'add a miso' — and it often sits in front of another noun: miso soup, miso paste, miso ramen, miso butter. Because Japanese food is everywhere now, English speakers use the word without explaining it, and cooks have started borrowing it for things that are not Japanese at all — miso caramel, miso pasta. The word is also a shorthand in food writing for that deep savoury taste people call umami.