Caviar: The Strange History and Uncertain Future of the World's Most Coveted Delicacy [Paperback]

Inga Saffron (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 14, 2003

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.


From the Hardcover edition.

Editorial Reviews

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. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Broadway (October 14, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0767906241
• ISBN-13: 978-0767906241
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.2 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.3 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #613,997 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Bravo, Ms. Saffron, November 3, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Caviar: The Strange History and Uncertain Future of the World's Most Coveted Delicacy (Hardcover)

The mystique of the sturgeon roe drew me to this book initially. As a self-proclaimed gourmand but admitted novice when it comes to caviar, I had much to learn. Ms. Saffron provides a crash course in the history of caviar to the present, and the effect of mankind's taste for the delicacy on the worldwide sturgeon population. The story is told just as that, a story of the author's hard-won education in sturgeon fishing and the caviar business, highlighting several key figures in the history of caviar. She has done an incredible amount of footwork and research, presented succintly in this volume. In the end, this small book leaves one feeling the cultural, financial, and ecological impact of the dwindling sturgeon populations, and at once stimulates a strong hunger for the tiny fish eggs and an equally strong sentiment to avoid them altogether.

12 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The History of an Amazing Luxury, December 30, 2002

By 

R. Hardy "Rob Hardy" (Columbus, Mississippi USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Caviar: The Strange History and Uncertain Future of the World's Most Coveted Delicacy (Hardcover)

From the famous Petrossian company, you can get 1.75 ounces of caviar from the increasingly rare Russian Beluga sturgeon, for $170. If you are bargain hunting, you can get the caviar from the white sturgeon for $88. If you are poverty stricken, Petrossian has condescended to sell salmon roe for about a ninth the cost of the white sturgeon, but salmon roe (which the Petrossian catalogue insists is "sometimes referred to as red caviar") just isn't caviar, and caviar lovers know it. Inga Saffron is a caviar lover, and shows it in _Caviar: The Strange History and Uncertain Future of the World's Most Coveted Delicacy_ (Broadway Books). She is architecture critic for _The Philadelphia Inquirer_, and was its Moscow correspondent from 1994 to 1998, when she was able to do a bit of cloak-and-dagger research into the dark alleys of the caviar trade. Her love is tempered by worry; the surprising history of humans' involvement with sturgeon has not done the sturgeon much good at all, and soon the sturgeon may not be doing any good for connoisseurs, no matter how wealthy.

The sturgeon is one of those organisms that Darwin called "living fossils." Some species have remained the same over the past 250 million years, but the past two hundred years that have given sturgeon real problems. Before that, they were not valued as food, but with the industrial revolution came better preservation and also a wealthy class that liked luxuries. Sturgeon were fished clean from the German Elbe River and the American Delaware River by the early 1900s. The stock in the Caspian sea rebounded some during the years of revolution and war in the first part of the twentieth century, and the Communists were well aware of the potential of caviar to bring cash. They controlled almost all the caviar supply by 1927, and they really controlled it, making sure it stayed a luxury. When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the caviar cartel was ended and poaching began. Capitalism has been deadly for the last sturgeon populations. Thousands of poachers who needed the money swarmed onto the Volga, prices tumbled, and so the poachers had to increase their take to keep going.

There is at least one researcher who is experimenting with "milking" the eggs from a live fish without killing it, so that she might bear again. That might be a hope for the sturgeon, as might be the plan to make caviar from the paddlefish, a Mississippi River relative of the sturgeon. White sturgeon are being raised in California, and Siberian sturgeon in France. Sturgeon farming is up against more problems than salmon farming; for one thing, sturgeons take ten years to mature sexually, so investors are looking at ten years of no profit and even no income. An attempt to farm sturgeon on the Volga means that huge quantities of sturgeon manure go downstream, and undoubtedly some of the farm-bred varieties will escape and breed with the wild fish, changing genes and spreading disease. Such attempts at environmental rescue have the potential to cause as many problems as poaching itself. Saffron writes, "In humanity's feeble attempts to protect and preserve the plodding sturgeon, we are reminded that we can't help altering the natural world even when we try our best to rescue it." This is a detailed, colorful history of a unique product, and a sadly less-than-unique report on human greed and ecological improvidence.

6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars WHERE HAVE ALL THE STURGEON GONE, LONG TIME PASSING, August 23, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Caviar: The Strange History and Uncertain Future of the World's Most Coveted Delicacy (Hardcover)

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.