Inga Saffron

Let me start with this:

I don't like caviar, and I think that sturgeon are particularly unattractive fish (there's a reason that so many good Lake Monster stories trace back to this behemoth).

That said, this was a completely fascinating book, part foodie-fetish and part eco-tract.

Whenever I read a book like this, I end up completely bowled over by how much I just don't know/never thought of. Did you know that caviar was once considered poor folks' food? It's true--the upper crust took the show more flesh of the fish and left the caviar behind as offal, fit only for the lower classes. Did you know that people will pay truly insane prices for a tiny taste of fish eggs? Did you know that sturgeon numbers have dropped to dangerously low levels that may never recover?

All this and more in an interesting and easy read. show less

In Caviar, the author traces the history of this popular delicacy from its humble beginnings as a peasant food, to its elevation to a rare treat enjoyed exclusively by the aristocracy, to its democratization as a novel treat for the middle class, and to its inevitable decline as the last sturgeon fisheries have begun to collapse through extreme overfishing, illegal poaching, loss of habitat through dam building and pollution. It is hard to sustainably harvest a product whose existence show more requires killing breeding females and collecting their eggs, and every caviar fishery has collapsed within a decade or two of their discovery and exploitation, with few if any lessons learned when moving on to the next river. show less

Tracing the beginnings of the sturgeon's roe eaten by fishermen and others during religious feasts when meat was not allowed to an icon in luxury and wealth. The author covers the journey of how caviar was made through the years, the challenges of transporting barrels of the delicate and easily perishable eggs, and how the demand from the rising middle class resulted in over-fishing and poaching. Sturgeons were over-fished in the Volga, the Caspian, the Delaware and Hudson Rivers and the show more Elbe before the thoughts of farming them took root.

Caviar has been used by the Communists to bring in much needed cash into the USSR, but upon the collapse of the regime, so too did the careful controls on sturgeon farming and harvesting collapse into one of chaos. Caviar companies had to compete against emerging producers of cheaper forms of caviar, from paddlefish, white sturgeon, salmon and even trout.

From pig feed to the table of kings, this is a fascinating study into the tiny, glistening, black slightly pearls of fish roe. show less

More natural history than food history, but still well written and interesting. Makes me want to try some caviar . .