Caviar is sold all the world over as a luxurious delicacy. It is made from mass of eggs from the sturgeon, called roe. The unfertilized eggs are salted and may be either pasteurized or not, although pasteurized eggs are less popular among the purists. Now you can buy caviar online for more variety at lower prices than shopping for the same products in upmarket department stores.
Traditionally, only the sturgeon roe from wild species living in the Caspian and Black Seas may be designated as ‘caviar’. Purists, including the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, insist that only fish roe from species belonging to the Acipenseriformes family may rightly bear the name. All other products must be designated a ‘substitute’. In some countries, the term may be applied to the roe of other species of sturgeon, salmon, trout, steelhead, lumpfish or whitefish. Vegetarian options may be made from eggplant or black-eyed peas (Texas caviar).
Sturgeon roe is classified according to rarity and price. Beluga, with its large, pea-sized eggs ranging in color from silver gray to black, is the most highly regarded. Next most sought after is Golden Sterlet, once the sole preserve of shahs, czars and emperors. Third in popularity is grayish brown Osetra Russian caviar and the lowest in price and easiest to find is gray Sevruga.
American Sturgeon caviar may be farmed or harvested from the wild. Wild sturgeon roe is most popular, particularly Beluga, Sterlet and Osetra. The Beluga sturgeon is the biggest of the sturgeon species. It grows as long as six meters and weighs as much as 600 kilograms (kg). The female of the species becomes sexually mature at 25 years old. It lives in the Caspian, Adriatic and Black Seas.
The Osetra species are found mainly in Russia. Sevruga sturgeon are the smallest, growing no longer than 1.5 meters and weighing 25 kg at thee most. They reach sexual maturity at the age of around eight years and live in the Caspian, Azov, and Black Seas.
Thanks to growing concern for the environment, farmed sturgeon are becoming more fashionable. They are produced largely in Italy and France. In the United Kingdom, one of the favourite species comes from Italy. It is the Calvisius and it comes from the White Sturgeon. It grows as long as the Beluga at six meters but only weighs as much as 400 kg.
A pub in Devon, in the south west of England, offers a jacket (baked) potato, called the Tuxedo. It is topped with creme fraiche and caviar.