White sturgeon caviar ◆

Caviar d’esturgeon blanc

What it is

North America's largest freshwater fish gave the continent its first farmed caviar: white sturgeon roe was harvested at Wilton, California in 1993, from broodstock that began as a UC Davis research project in 1979. The Po valley now raises the same Pacific species, so a tin stamped Italian may hold a fish native to the Sacramento River.

In the kitchen

Serve it at 8–10 °C from a nacre or horn spoon; steel oxidises the grain within seconds and leaves a tinny edge you cannot wash out. Being low in iodine it holds its own under cream and warm blini — but never under lemon, which flattens it.

Goes with

Crème fraîche Egg Potato Chives Butter Cream

Same species

Caviar Baerii caviar Adriatic sturgeon caviar Osetra caviar Pressed caviar Schrenckii caviar

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