Caviar

“Here’s whatever is worth knowing about Romanoff and Petrossian and the remarkable history of beluga, osetra, or sevruga eggs, all in this one basket, served with much style.”
—Kirkus Reviews


“To give the caviar trade a human face, Saffron offers portraits of both historical and contemporary Russian, Greek, and German personalities who have dedicated their lives to expanding the market for this regal roe. — Mark Knoblauch, Booklist


“Caviar started out as pig slop…how this same gunk was transformed into a delicacy is…fascinating.” — Forbes Magazine


“This is a dandy book.” — Richard Lourie, New York Times Book Review


“[Saffron] does a delightful job relating caviar’s unlikely transformation from peasant fare to aristocratic delicacy to bourgeois status symbol.” — The Philadelphia Inquirer


“In her sharp-eyed, informative and briskly written book “Caviar,” Saffron examines the natural, economic, and gastronomical history of the sturgeon and its eggs.” — Los-Angeles Times


“An enchanting book on a deliciously mysterious subject.” — Baltimore Sun


“Written with an elegance befitting the subject, Caviar is a fascinating work of culinary and environmental history.” — USA Today


“Saffron writes with color and flair.” — The Christian Science Monitor


“Fascinating….affecting…Part natural history, part culinary history….a modern parable about greed and loss…Saffron has done a nimble job of dramatizing it in the most vivid of terms, leaving the reader with a understanding of how the fate of a fish has been determined by the vicissitudes of politics and business, by technological advances and shifting cultural appetites.” — Michiko Kakutani, New York Times


“Inga Saffron is a journalist who knows how to tell a story… [her] book that tracks the fate of these fascinating eggs from peasant fare to the ultimate luxury, from the Black Sea to San Francisco, from abundance to near-extinction. Along the way, she introduces scenes and characters with a journalist’s passion for detail.” — Washington Post