Tag: rabelais

A history of Caviar, the prehistoric Sturgeon eggs

20 April 2009

Yuck, fish eggs; who knew? For people not privy to the food made famous by the pleasantly posh, you may not realize what caviar is and have that knee-jerk reaction when someone spills the beans on its origins. Caviar - the more famous type - is harvested from the Sturgeon. The Sturgeon is actually a prehistoric fish, one of only a dozen or so species on the planet to exist at the same time as the dinosaurs. In itself, that little tidbit of information is enough to make the Sturgeons eggs worth their weight in gold.

The first recorded instance of someone enjoying fish eggs was in France in 1553, according to Rabelais and his Faits et dits Heroiques du Grand Pantagruet. The first recorded instance of the word “Caviar” was in 1591. The word “Caviar” actually originates from the Turkish “khavyar” and the food was rumored to be a staple in the diets of the Middle Eastern and other Eastern Europeans for hundreds of years before it became a delicacy.

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