> It's almost certainly more correct to list umami as one of the basic tastes, rather than savory.

I really don't think so: 'savory' is an actual English word while 'umami' is a Japanese one. Writing 'umami' like writing 'arugula' instead of 'rocket' or 'cilantro' instead of 'coriander.'

And 'umami' isn't really any more accurate than 'savory': it's a 100-year-old neologism from the Japanese word for 'delicious.' Given a choice between two words which aren't necessarily perfect fits for the concept, why not stick with the native one?

Because savory has other meanings in cooking and umami is a essentially a pure concept in English. Umami means one and exactly one thing.

Exactly. Essentially English co-opted umami as a stand-in for glutamate-y which, we can probably agree is an aesthetic improvement. It's at least arguably a subset of savory but as I commented earlier there are clearly meanings of savory in cooking/baking that have no relationship to umami as the term is used in English.