Ebbe Mørk / DAGEN


Sturgeons from the French rivers now deliver roe by the tonnes, also to the Danish market, where the wholesale price is Dkr. 7.500 the kilogramme.
Caviar is eaten with a spoon, but how big should the spoon be? The small spoons of mother-of-pearl, which came with the samples at restaurant “Reinwald” on “Vand-kunsten” in Copenhagen, where the Scandinavian importer Rossini Caviar and his Danish distributor Hanstholm Fish and Shellfish presented French Caviar just recently, has the size of a teaspoon, and that is both the most suitable and the most economical.

Caviar must be the most costly delicacy, humans can put in their mouths. In the classical sense caviar is Russian, since it was in the Russian rivers that the sturgeon, mother of the product, beat its tail until neglect and pollution made life sour and impossible for the fish, which is part of a numerous family, whose members varies much in size. At a later stage Iran became a major supplier of yet finer caviar from sturgeons in the Caspian Sea. And now it comes from the French rivers.

It is the world-famous, old fishmonger Prunier, who is behind the endeavours, which, since 1990 have unfolded to make a production of French caviar. France is the country in the world, which consumes most caviar per capita with an import of 15% of the world’s production. Maison Prunier, which began as a humble, but excellent fish restaurant more than 100 years ago, when la grand mere Madame Prunier herself was in the kitchen and otherwise wrote her widely acclaimed cooking book about fish, which has also been published in Danish in several print runs. Maison Prunier is owned by the fashion- and businessman Pierre Bergé, who made the basis for the fashion house Yves Saint Laurent.

At the beginning of the nineteenth century the family Prunier began to get caviar from sturgeon caught in the river Gironde in the southwesterly corner of the country (France) and during the 1920ies they became leaders of the home market. Together with the consequences of the second world war and brutal overfishing the stock fell dramatically and in 1980 the fish was wiped out..
The re-establishing of the sturgeon culture began some ten years ago, when the family imported sturgeon of the type called Acipenser Baerii from Siberia. This fish may become close to 100 years of age and reach a weight of 100 kilos., and then it is as a rule 3 meters in length. When the female is close to ten years of age, it begins to produce eggs. The Baeriii felt so well that it began breeding in the first of the caviar farms Prunier established in Dordogne. Today there are eight farms, and the production is about 5 tonnes a year, but in the course of the coming three years it is calculated that a yearly production of 15 tonnes may be reached.

The price of Baerii is Dkr. 7.500 the kilo at wholesaler Hanstholm Fish and Shellfish at the Copenhagen Fish Market. But what the price will be retail and in the restaurants, which already have signed up for purchase is unpredictable. One of Denmarks top restaurateurs and cooks, Michel Michaud from “Marie Louise” in Odense, partook in the test tasting. He was exhilarated and swore that it is not for patriotic reasons that he will serve the caviar of his homeland, but the taste is fine.

This writer’s basis for comparison is for explainable reasons minimal, but let me state that the taste is unusually clean and clear and saltet just that touch required to round up this delicacy without killing the elegant, nutty aftertaste. The roe is prepared in a traditional manner and drysalted in laboratories approved by EU. On the market there is a fair amount of caviar, which, in spite of the high prices is conserved with borax and quinine, which gives a light, pungent taste - unfortunately the taste, which some believe to be the characterization of caviar. The eggs of the Baerii sturgeon vary in colours from charcoal gray over almost black to golden brown.

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