Product Description

In the tradition of Cod and Olives: a fascinating journey into the hidden history, culture, and commerce of caviar.

Once merely a substitute for meat during religious fasts, today caviar is an icon of luxury and wealth. In Caviar, Inga Saffron tells, for the first time, the story of how the virgin eggs of the prehistoric-looking, bottom-feeding sturgeon were transformed from a humble peasant food into a czar’s delicacy–and ultimately a coveted status symbol for a rising middle class. She explores how the glistening black eggs became the epitome of culinary extravagance, while taking us on a revealing excursion into the murky world of caviar on the banks of the Volga River and Caspian Sea in Russia, the Elbe in Europe, and the Hudson and Delaware Rivers in the United States. At the same time, Saffron describes the complex industry caviar has spawned, illustrating the unfortunate consequences of mass marketing such a rare commodity.

The story of caviar has long been one of conflict, crisis, extravagant claims, and colorful characters, such as the Greek sea captain who first discovered the secret method of transporting the perishable delicacy to Europe, the canny German businessmen who encountered a wealth of untapped sturgeon in American waters, the Russian Communists who created a sophisticated cartel to market caviar to an affluent Western clientele, the dirt-poor poachers who eked out a living from sturgeon in the aftermath of the Soviet collapse and the “caviar Mafia” that has risen in their wake, and the committed scientists who sacrificed their careers to keep caviar on our tables.
Filled with lore and intrigue, Caviar is a captivating work of culinary, natural, and cultural history.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #771431 in Books
• Published on: 2002-10-08
• Released on: 2002-10-08
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 288 pages

From Publishers Weekly
As the Moscow correspondent for the Philadelphia Inquirer from 1994-1998 (she's now the paper's architecture critic), Saffron traveled throughout the former Soviet Union, reporting on those heady, hectic days. She also acquired a taste for caviar: "Those glistening black globules," she writes, "are a culinary Rorschach that unleashes our deeply held notions about wealth, luxury, and life." From the ghost town of Caviar, New Jersey to the illegal markets of Moscow, Saffron takes her readers on an absorbing journey as she details the bizarre and fascinating history of one of the world's most coveted delicacies. Caviar, long associated with wealthy Russian aristocracy (though originally considered a peasant food) and thought to possess both medicinal and aphrodisiacal properties, has been a source of great international controversy. Once considered the "black gold" of Russia, in the 1990's caviar became the symbol of American middle-class affluence: "When caviar prices were tumbling...Americans were making record salaries," Saffron writes, and their new wealth made them "crave the exotic." The continued demand for caviar and the sturgeon's placement on the list of endangered species has led to increasingly intricate smuggling rings. Saffron has taken an off-beat but intriguing topic, and, through her elegant and detailed prose, created a book worthy of gourmands and amateur historians alike.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
If you liked Cod, you'll love Caviar: a thoroughgoing account from a reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
Caviar, along with champagne, marks the height of gastronomic elegance. Unlike the ubiquitous champagne, caviar has grown increasingly rare and ever more expensive. Centuries ago, Russian rivers so teemed with enormous sturgeon that fishermen were overwhelmed with roe, which they tossed to their lucky pigs. First peasants learned to appreciate the toothsome sturgeon eggs; then their overlords discovered caviar's virtues for themselves. It also took development of salting and chilling techniques to make caviar transportable. As with other natural products, demand quickly outstripped supply, and sturgeon populations went into irreversible decline. Political and economic turmoil in present-day Russia, source of much of the world's caviar, has raised the specter of sturgeon's extinction as poachers undo government planning. Meanwhile, the U.S and other countries are attempting to develop their own sturgeon-raising industries. To give the caviar trade a human face, Saffron offers portraits of both historical and contemporary Russian, Greek, and German personalities who have dedicated their lives to expanding the market for this regal roe. Mark Knoblauch
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Customer Reviews

A Luxuriously Gooey Read
I had the mixed fortune to read this book in a Puerto Rican resort, about a million miles away from where caviar is bought or sold, but Saffron's vivid description of this delicacy more than compensated for its physical absence. Caviar is one of those few foods which changes form when put in the mouth - the fish eggs pop like bubbles as soon as they're on the tongue - and in this sense it is not unlike chocolate (which melts in the mouth) for its sensual appeal. Caviar goes back to the Black sea, wherein beluga has been farmed for thousands of years (Herodotus gets quoted along the way). Sadly, the actual stocks of Russian caviar are so badly depleted that they are close to extermination; for decent, ethical fish eggs one has to go to the American farm-raised sturgeon or, as a further compromise, for lesser stuff such as salmon eggs. There are interesting chapters on the cultural emergence of caviar as a delicacy; sadder ones on the sudden eruption of strip-farming in the early 1990s. Best enjoyed with a glass or two of champagne.

Culinary and Historical
A reader does not have to have the infatuation with caviar the author has, nor for that matter even have tasted the roe of various fish to enjoy this book. You must have a serious gastronomic love, or perhaps lust, for a given dish to even begin to match the writer's rapturous relationship with a food that persons either love or find impossible to understand. The extreme reactions to the food are easier to classify once you have read how the food is prepared and how much of what is passed off today as various forms of caviar is fraudulent, or worse, likely to make you ill. The days of sturgeon that weigh as much as the car in your driveway are forever gone. What has replaced these mammoth living fossils are a few hapless fish that have survived destructive fishing and pollution, and finally farm-bred fish that are meticulously cared for in massive tanks.

The irony of caviar's longevity is that is was maintained well in to the 20th Century by the worst practitioner of production, The Former Soviet Union. The same persons that could not match wheat production during the time of the Czars, build a car, or produce the correct number of bicycles managed to keep the cash crop of caviar healthy for decades. This food that is largely thought of as Russian has been on tables for centuries and did not find its home in the Caspian Sea until after the sturgeon had been decimated elsewhere. Germany was once a large source and The United States was the foremost producer internationally until the turn of the 20th century, when after a scant 30 years with ruthless efficiency the fish stocks were destroyed here in the US. Another irony is that as the fish are being relegated to farms they once again are finding their homes in California.

Inga Saffron does a wonderful job of explaining the history of the fish and the world as it existed as sturgeon populations waxed and waned. She shares stories of major caviar producing areas on the shores of New Jersey that are so broken down as to not even qualify as ghost towns, nature having reclaimed those areas that once were internationally known. She also shares the roles of scientists who attempt to develop methods to protect fishing stocks, identify smugglers, and keep these fish that were once a plentiful behemoth from becoming extinct. There are also interesting consequences that result from the work of science. Using the same methods to identify the caviar sold in New York City in the 1990's as they use to track smugglers, science documented that one third of the caviar being sold was not what it claimed to be. New Yorkers had a one in three chance of being defrauded.

The same economic incentive that has lead to the near extinction of the sturgeon is what will keep the species alive. What is a new danger for these fish is that they are no longer the most important economic interest in areas of production as they historically were. Where once they were as valuable as gold they know have lost their place to oil. One scientist suggested embryos of the fish be frozen and reintroduced to the planet in a century after the oil has been exhausted.

Hopefully for the benefit of these remarkable creatures caviar will keep its mystique and its cachet. There are no longer artificial market forces to keep the roe rare just as DeBeers keeps diamonds precious by their monopoly. It costs a fortune to produce sturgeon on farms; hopefully people will continue to buy caviar at prices that persons who don't share the author's passion will ever understand.

WHERE HAVE ALL THE STURGEON GONE, LONG TIME PASSING
From the time that the TV series, Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, hit the small screens viewers were invited to indulge themselves in the "caviar dreams" of the wealthy. I suppose it was due in part to this reference that I have always been intrigued by this delicacy of delicacies.

Caviar, the book, is an enjoyable read that leads the reader through the very interesting history of caviar, the food, from its surprisingly humble origins in Russia to its New World presence and industry.

The book also tells the sad plight of the sturgeon, the huge fish from which the finest caviar in the world is harvested, and how this "living fossil" is now in danger of becoming extinct and that in order to sate the lust that the super rich have, not only for the taste of caviar but for its prestige as well.

Interestingly, I found that the sturgeon story has some similarities to the tragedy of the near extinction of the American Bison. Whereas in all too many cases the buffalo was slaughtered only for its tongue, the sturgeon is taken not so much for its meat which is consumed for food, but for its primary and, comparatively, small contribution in its eggs.

A truly fascinating story, read it with a big dish of beluga and crackers or, better yet, save the sturgeon and read it like I did with a coke and some pretzels. I couldn't have afforded even a small dish of beluga anyway.