Salt (62 page)

A
NUMBER OF
seventeenth-and eighteenth-century writers insist that the heir to garum is not anchovy sauces that later became ketchup, but salted fish eggs, caviar. Guido Panciroli, who wrote a 1715 book titled
History of Many Memorable Things Lost
, believed, “Other types of garum called bottarga and caviar now take their place.”

The word
caviar
is of Turkish derivation and refers to the eggs of the sturgeon—a prehistoric animal that has not evolved in 180 million years. It is a huge migratory fish that, like the salmon, is anadromous, that is, it lives in saltwater but swims upstream to spawn in the freshwater place of its birth. The eating of its eggs may well be as old as or even older than the eating of garum. Originally, the eggs were food for fishermen, cheap food because they were not salable, whereas the fish itself brought high prices. But gradually the eggs gained appreciation. In 1549, their preparation was described by Cristoforo di Messisbugo, a Renaissance food writer from Ferrara:

CAVIAR TO EAT FRESH AND TO CONSERVE

Take sturgeon eggs, the best of which are black. Spread them out on a table using the blade of a knife. Take out the ones that are filmy, weigh the remaining ones and, for every 25 pounds of eggs, add 12 and one half ounces of salt, or one half ounce per pound.

The medieval rivers of Europe were full of egg-bearing sturgeon. They were common in the Seine, the Gironde, the Thames, the Po, the Danube, the Ebro in northern Spain, and the Guadalquivir in southern Spain. The fish were often a subject of royal privileges. The British monarch, starting with Edward II in the thirteenth century, claims the right to the first sturgeon caught in British waters every year.

France produced caviar since at least the time of Louis XIV, largely from the sturgeon catch on the Gironde River. But sturgeon caught on the Seine, even in Paris, was a rare enough event for the fish to be presented to kings. Colbert regulated the fishery to preserve the fish, and these laws are still in force. But the fish are gone. Louis XV got a Paris sturgeon in 1758 and Louis XVI got one in 1782. Antonin Carême, the famous early-nineteenth-century French cook, insisted he saw a 220-pound sturgeon almost three yards long by the Pont de Neuilly on the western edge of Paris. That was one of the last sturgeon sightings in Paris.

Sturgeons, which can weigh up to two tons, have little resistance to industrial pollution. Even the Gironde, the last holdout of French sturgeon, became too polluted, as did the Hudson and other great sturgeon rivers of North America.

When Europeans settled in North America, they recorded seeing Native Americans catching huge sturgeon. Even in the nineteenth century, American rivers had sturgeon. Caviar was served as a free bar snack, in the hope that as with peanuts, the saltiness would encourage drinking. During World War I, British soldiers were fed cans of pressed caviar, which they called “fish jam” and mostly loathed. A soldier would pay for cans of sardines rather than eat the free fish jam that was issued.

For caviar to have been considered the heir to garum, it had to have been used as a seasoning rather than being eaten by itself. Until the twentieth century, that seems to have been the case. In nineteenth-century Russia, sauerkraut was valued more than caviar, and in this recipe the caviar is simply a pleasant salted flavoring for the cabbage:

SOUS IZ KAPUSTY S IKROJ

(SAUERKRAUT WITH CAVIAR)

Boil three pounds shredded sauerkraut, adding only enough water to prevent it from burning. When it has cooked, drain in a coarse sieve. Melt a half pound Finnish butter in a skillet, stir in the sauerkraut, and fry both together. Pour salted water over caviar that has just been removed from a fresh fish, mash it fine, mix with the sauerkraut, and let it boil thoroughly over the fire. The caviar will impart a fine flavor to the sauerkraut. This dish may be served with patties, small sausages, or fried fish. On fast days, substitute olive oil for the Finnish butter. Add enough caviar so that the sauerkraut appears as if it were strewn with poppy seeds.—
Elena Molokhovets,
A Gift to Young Housewives,
1897

Apparently, by the early twentieth century, Americans valued Russian caviar from the Caspian Sea. In 1905, Russia was in open revolt against the czar, and in April 1906, an American publication,
Wide World Magazine,
warned, “The unrest in Russia, it is feared, will greatly affect the caviar industry.” The writer was concerned that the cossacks would get involved in the political unrest and abandon fishing sturgeon.

But the magazine did see reasons for revolt. It reported that the czar forced the cossacks to give him a yearly tribute of eleven tons of their best caviar and reported that this tribute alone required the killing of 5,000 sturgeon at the start of each season.

The article described the cossacks in the Russian winter, standing on the ice and fishing through holes. It reported that the eggs were mixed with “the finest salt,” at a ratio of 4 to 5 percent salt. The Caspian, fed by the Ural and Volga Rivers, is the world’s largest saltwater lake. Not only does it have sturgeons, it has sea salt where brackish water evaporates at the mouths and estuaries of the numerous rivers that empty into it.

Before the 1917 revolution, the cossacks were the dominant caviar producers of the Caspian. They fished sturgeon only twice a year, for two weeks each time, and the sturgeon seemed inexhaustible. The entire cossack population participated in these two brief fishing seasons. First, in the autumn, whole extended families pulled nets down the Volga River. The second two-week season was in the middle of winter, and this fishery also was on the river. Armed with harpoons, hundreds of cossacks would stand on the ice of the frozen river awaiting a cannon blast that was their signal to pierce the ice and attempt to spear a sturgeon. The noise would drive the terrified fish downstream, and the cossacks would follow with their harpoons and cannons while merchants from Moscow, Leningrad, even Paris and other European capitals waited for the giant fish to be cut open while still alive.

The price has been leaping upward since the beginning of the twentieth century. From 1900 to 1915, the price of caviar doubled. Merchants began importing Russian caviar, not to mention French caviar with Russian labels, to exclusive establishments in western Europe. This was how the Petrossian family, today one of the leading caviar distributors, got started. Born on the Iranian side of the Caspian, they grew up on the Russian side, immigrated to Paris, and discovered that Russian things were in vogue with the rich.

During the twentieth century, as industrial pollution and oil spills killed off sturgeon around the world, commercial caviar fishing was largely reduced to the Caspian Sea. Historically the Caspian has always been controlled by Russia from the northern shore and Iran from the southern shore, giving these two nations a virtual monopoly on caviar. But the Caspian and the Russian rivers that feed it have also been besieged by pollution. Chemicals and fishermen have killed so many sturgeon that by the early 1970s even the Russians were suffering a shortage of caviar. In that decade, increased industrialization in Iran started threatening the Iranian fisheries on the southern side of the lake. At this point, the price of caviar became prohibitive to most people.

Sturgeon is still fished in the Caspian only twice a year, with a larger catch in the spring and a smaller catch in the fall, hauled by net from its habitat in the deepest pockets of the Caspian floor. Once landed on a factory ship, the sturgeon receives, as do many fish caught by man, a clunk on the head. The blow knocks the fish unconscious and permits the fisherman to open it live and remove the roe.

The eggs must be passed through a wide screen to separate them from other fibrous matter, and then they must be delicately mixed with salt, both to preserve the eggs and to bring out the taste. As is often the case when preparing food, there is a delicate trade-off: The more salt, the better preserved, but the less salt, the finer the taste. Preparing the caviar takes careful labor, which also increases the cost. In general, Iranians salt their caviar less than Russians, although each fishery is slightly different, and in fact each fish is different, which is why the eggs in any sized can of caviar are all from the same fish.

Of the twenty-four known varieties of sturgeon, three are still fished for caviar in the Caspian. The prices of the caviar from the three varieties—beluga, ossetra, and sevruga—are not a reflection of quality but rather of the rarity of the fish. The giant beluga are hardest to find, and therefore their caviar is the most expensive. It takes twenty years for a female beluga to mature, and at that point she can weigh as much as 1,800 pounds and be up to twenty-six feet in length. Such a fish could yield twenty pounds of eggs. Beluga have the largest eggs, and these smoky gray bubbles are also the most delicate eggs, which is another reason they are the most expensive. More beluga eggs are broken and lost in processing than any other kind of caviar.

The dominance of Caspian caviar has been declining, and it now represents only about three-quarters of the world’s supply. With Caspian caviar growing scarcer and more expensive every year, there have been attempts to bring back European and American caviar, partly through farmed sturgeon, yielding such scrupulously labeled products as the “American Paddlefish caviar.”

BUTARGHE

Take the eggs from a fresh mullet, best when in season, and take care not to break the delicate skin surrounding each egg and add a discreet amount of salt to the eggs—neither too much nor too little—and leave this way for a day and a night. Then place it in smoke far enough from a flame so that it does not feel the heat. When it has dried then place it in a wooden box or barrel surrounded in wheat bran. This bottarga is typically eaten uncooked. But those who want it cooked can heat it under ashes or in a clean, warm oven, turning it, but just until it is hot.—
Martino,
Libro de arte coquinaria
(Book of the art of cooking), 1450

L
ITTLE IS KNOWN
of Martino, including his full name. He was born in Como, worked for aristocrats, and was one of the most respected and influential Italian cooks of his day. His bottarga recipe calls for mullet eggs and is smoked rather than pressed. Bottarga, which the eighteenth-century Panciroli had listed with caviar as a possible descendant of garum, varies with the fishery. Native Americans used to make it by pressing and drying sturgeon eggs. Today, it is usually salted, pressed, and dried fish eggs. In Tunisia, bottarga is made from mullet eggs and is a product associated with the Jews of Tunis, the same way smoked salmon and pastrami are associated with Jews in North American cites. But the name is thought to come from the Arab
bitârikh,
and it was also made in ancient Egypt, probably also from mullet.