On Food and Cooking

become increasingly rare as civilization has
encroached on its wild source. Happily,
sturgeon farms are now producing good
caviar, and a variety of other fish eggs are
available as affordable and interesting
alternatives.
The ovaries or “roes” of fish accumulate
vast numbers of eggs in preparation for
spawning: as many as 20,000 in a single
salmon, and several million in a sturgeon,
carp, or shad. Because fish eggs contain all
the nutrients that one cell will need to grow
into a hatchling, they’re often a more
concentrated form of nourishment than the
fish itself, with more fat (between 10 and 20%
in sturgeon and salmon caviars) and large
quantities of savory building-block amino
acids and nucleic acids. They often contain
attractive pigments, sometimes bright pink or
yellow carotenoids, sometimes camouflaging
brown-black melanins.
The best roes for both cooking and salting