Word: sturgeon
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...sturgeon, one of the biggest, ugliest and most primitive of all fish, would be only an evolutionary oddity were it not for the million little black globules nestled in the average female's ovaries. If Mama is called Acipenser huso and comes from the Black Sea or the Caspian, her eggs may wind up in the U.S. as Iranian or Russian beluga caviar worth $200 a pound. The good news is that federal aid, abetted by academic enterprise, private initiative and a dash of Iron Curtain intrigue, may soon put this exquisite fishy fudge on middle-income toast...
...bearer of these tidings is A. transmontanus, the big Pacific sturgeon. A sister under the skin to the Black Sea species, it runs naturally up California's Sacramento River. (In the 19th century, sturgeon were so plentiful in East Coast rivers that the U.S. exported vast quantities of caviar to Europe.) These overlooked aristocrats have been extracted from the stream by the University of California at Davis, which plans to breed them in vast ponds like those used in the South to grow the plebeian catfish. The Le Carre element enters with Serge Doroshov, 42, who helped develop...
...plenitude of wild game, the authors point out, gave Americans their insatiable meat tooth-they average nearly 200 lbs. a year per person. Even the once numerous Hudson River sturgeon were called "Albany beef." With woods and waters full of food, many early settlers found little incentive to farm. Besides, farms were fixed targets for marauding Indians. Pigs, which foraged for themselves, were easier to raise. As a result, by the 19th century salt pork became a staple at breakfast, lunch and supper. With the exception of Indian corn and potatoes, fruits and vegetables tended to be shunned as unhealthful...
Soviet scientists had been trying to find a suitably cheap, protein-based caviar substitute for more than a decade. Most sturgeons-huge fish that can weigh more than 1,000 lbs.-are caught in the Caspian Sea. But as a result of a drop in water level and rising industrial pollution at the Russian end of the sea, the Soviet sturgeon catch has been dwindling, while Iran's production has remained steady. After experimenting with other possible bases for a caviar substitute, the Russian chemists settled on casein, a protein found in curdled milk. Explains Chemist Vladimir Tolstogouzov: "Soybean...
...Russians first mix the casein with gelatin to produce a kind of porridge. This is poured into a steel centrifuge and mechanically agitated until the mixture emerges as a mound of little white pellets. The pellets are then laced with quantities of sturgeon sperm (for authentic taste), bathed with tannin extracted from tea leaves and stems (for color) and finally given a salty bath (the same preservative used on natural caviar...