Papaya seeds never thought that they would one day become a substitute for caviar

In movies and TV dramas, caviar is a high-end ingredient served in high-end restaurants; but in some short videos, papaya seeds that are usually thrown away can be disguised as caviar, and the finished product looks quite presentable.

The video blogger will also let his family and friends taste the fake caviar, and most of the "victims" will even fall for it - although they feel something is wrong when chewing it, they must seriously praise it for the sake of face: "It smells so good!"

Using papaya seeds to impersonate caviar has become a popular online meme | Bilibili: @一颗大头呀

Putting aside the performance element of the video, in fact, not to mention papaya seeds, even many fish eggs cannot be passed off as "caviar" .

Even though they are all black

According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, only immature sturgeon eggs that have been salted can be called "caviar".

At first glance, papaya seeds and caviar do look a bit similar - both are small spherical particles with a radius of about 3 to 5 mm, and the color is also " black with a hint of gray "; but in fact, it is not so easy to fool people. The gray color of caviar comes from the yolk and other substances inside, from the inside to the outside . Moreover, the color of sturgeon roe varies from fish to fish , and it may appear black, gray, or even gold.

Four different types of sturgeon caviar, from left to right: Kaluga, Beluga, Imperial Osetrahe Osetra, from different species of sturgeon, which will be discussed in detail below｜caviarstar.com

The gray color of papaya seeds is due to the translucent film on the outer layer, which is particularly obvious when the papaya is just cut.

Strictly speaking, this membrane is not part of the seed, but the aril , just like the pulp of lychee and longan that we usually eat. After washing the papaya seeds, the aril fades away, and the beauty effect is lost, revealing the true face - pitch black and wrinkled, which is completely incomparable to the smooth and translucent caviar.

Papaya seeds｜Jianer

As for the difference in taste between the two, there is no need to say more. Papaya seeds are spicy and a little bit harsh on the teeth (don’t ask me how I know)... while caviar, when squeezed with the tip of the tongue and the roof of the mouth, can burst out with a unique freshness and mellowness, which is worthy of being one of the three major delicacies in the world, along with foie gras and truffles.

So, if you want to use this trick to prank your relatives and friends in real life, just forget it.

They're not caviar.

It is a bit outrageous to use papaya seeds to impersonate caviar. However, many things called "caviar" in life are not real caviar . Strictly speaking, the caviar of fish other than sturgeon needs to be prefixed, for example, salmon caviar is actually "Salmon caviar".

Salmon caviar on the left and sturgeon caviar on the right, served in a special spoon made of mother-of-pearl, which is said to prevent the taste from changing｜THOR / Flickr

Bowfin fish (Amia calva) also have black eggs and are also used as a caviar substitute. Bowfin fish are found in rivers and lakes in eastern North America and are one of the most primitive species. Caviar made from its eggs is called "Cajun caviar".

The red fish roe we eat in Japanese restaurants is the eggs of salted salmon or trout , namely the salmon (Oncorhynchus keta) and pink salmon (O. gorbuscha) of the Salmonidae family.

Plump salmon roe | tortic84 / Pixabay

If the roe is not separated from the ovary, it is made into various long strips of roe products . The whole salmon ovary is salted and called "tendon"; the roe of mullet (Mugil cephalus) is salted, desalted and sun-dried to make "mullet roe"; "Mentaiko" comes from pollock, whose official name is yellowtail pollock (Gadus chalcogrammus), and can be made into "spicy mentaiko" with a unique flavor by adding chili peppers.

Cooked mentaiko strips | kyungeun / Wikipedia Commons

However, even these "substitutes" for caviar have substitutes - adding sodium alginate drop by drop into calcium chloride solution can form small particles shaped like fish roe. After seasoning and dyeing, and then exquisitely presented on a plate, you may not be able to taste any difference.

Caviar comes from sturgeons

As mentioned earlier, the internationally recognized "authentic" caviar comes from sturgeons. Sturgeons belong to the order Acipenserformes in taxonomy, including two existing families: Acipenseridae and Acipenseridae.

Sturgeons are veritable " living fossils ". Their ancestors appeared in the Jurassic period about 200 million years ago. From the fossil evidence, their current form is almost the same as it was then - spindle-shaped body, with a "crooked tail fin" like sharks, mouth located on the ventral side, and a long snout, which is convenient for feeding on bottom-dwelling fish, shrimp and shellfish. Some species are even "clad in armor", with five rows of vertical bone plates on the body surface, one row on the back, two rows on the sides and two rows on the ventral side.

The Russian sturgeon Acipenser gueldenstaedtii in armor | Daniel Döhne / Wikipedia Commons

Sturgeons are huge , usually growing to 2-3.5 meters in the wild. The largest sturgeon in history was a European sturgeon (Huso huso) caught at the mouth of the Volga River in 1827, which was 7.2 meters long and weighed 1.5 tons. Some legendary river monsters are actually sturgeons.

The captured European sturgeon. This picture was taken in the Volga River in 1924. Although it is not the largest sturgeon in history, it is also very large. | Irish ecology blog

Sturgeons almost always have the habit of migrating . Adult sturgeons live at the mouths of rivers in various oceans, and migrate to freshwater areas to lay eggs during the breeding season. Of course, this is not absolute, and some species, such as the lake sturgeon (Acipenser fulvescens) distributed in North America, always live in freshwater rivers or lakes.

Many sturgeons can be made into caviar, the most famous of which is the European sturgeon mentioned above. The caviar made from its roe is called "Beluga", which is said to have a smooth taste and a rich creamy flavor. This sturgeon lives in the Caspian Sea, the Black Sea, the Sea of ​​Azov, and the Adriatic Sea. The roe harvested from a 1-ton European sturgeon usually weighs more than 300 kilograms.

However, caviar has also led to a large number of European sturgeons being caught, and the population has dropped sharply. It has now been listed as a critically endangered species . Therefore, the production and trade of caviar from wild European sturgeons is strictly prohibited in all countries except Iran, and "Beluga" has become even more rare and expensive. A type of caviar made from albino European sturgeon roe from the southern Caspian Sea has set a world record for the "most expensive food", with a price of 20,000 pounds per kilogram.

European sturgeon caviar, a noble food with a high price | freshcatch

In addition to "Beluga", the other two best quality caviar are "Osetra" and "Sevruga", which come from European sturgeon (A. guldenstadti) and sturgeon (A.stellatus), which are distributed along the coasts of various European seas. In addition, the roe of H. dauricus and A. schrenkii are also common caviar ingredients. These two fish are mainly distributed in the coastal areas of eastern Russia and the Heilongjiang River basin in my country.

The more affordable caviar mainly comes from the Siberian sturgeon (A. baerii). This is the most important farmed sturgeon species in the world, farmed in at least 22 countries including China, Russia, Germany, Italy, France, etc. In 2016, the production of Siberian sturgeon caviar accounted for 28% of the global total production, reaching 67.71 tons.

The oldest species, and also the most endangered

No matter which type of sturgeon you choose, you will have to wait a long time to get the caviar known as "black gold". Sturgeons are one of the longest-lived fish in the world, with an average lifespan of 50 to 60 years, and some species can live to over 100 years old. They also reach sexual maturity later, usually taking 15 to 20 years.

With such a slow growth rate and the increasing demand for caviar, sturgeons are prone to overfishing. Coupled with the deterioration of the ecological environment and the blocking of migration routes by dams, the population of sturgeons has dropped sharply in the past few decades . The survival status of these ancient species on the blue planet is not optimistic.

All sturgeon species have been listed in the appendices of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species since April 1998. The European Atlantic sturgeon and the American shortnose sturgeon are listed in Appendix I of CITES, and trade in them is absolutely prohibited . Other species are listed in Appendix II, and can only be legally traded internationally with a CITES import and export permit, and the trading volume is strictly limited.

The European Atlantic sturgeon (Acipenser sturio), listed on Appendix I, is currently critically endangered | Aah-Yeah / Wikimedia Commons

However, the speed of the sturgeon decline is somewhat unexpected. Not long ago, the IUCN announced the extinction of the white sturgeon; but not only the white sturgeon, the reassessment results of all sturgeons are very distressing - all 26 existing sturgeon species in the world are facing the risk of extinction, including 17 critically endangered, 3 endangered, and 5 vulnerable, while the endangered level of the Yangtze River white sturgeon has risen from "critically endangered" to "extinct in the wild".

The caviar we eat nowadays basically comes from farmed sturgeons , and most of them are interspecific hybrids of sturgeons, such as the "Bester" obtained by crossing the diploid European sturgeon female with the small-bodied sturgeon (A.ruthenus) male. Compared with purebred European sturgeons, this type of hybrid can reach sexual maturity in a shorter time and produce the same high-quality caviar. So, as long as you buy it through legal channels and have a fat wallet, you can eat it with confidence.

Forget about caviar, but why would anyone eat snail roe sauce?｜de jaeger Caviar d'escargot / Wikimedia Commons

References

[1] Bledsoe, GE, Bledsoe, CD, & Rasco, B. (2003). Caviars and fish roe products. [2]https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/most-expensive-caviar

[3]https://www.iucn.org/content/sturgeon-more-critically-endangered-any-other-group-species

[4] Bronzi, P., Chebanov, M., Michaels, JT, Wei, Q., Rosenthal, H., & Gessner, J. (2019). Sturgeon meat and caviar production: Global update 2017. Journal of Applied Ichthyology, 35(1), 257-266.

[5] https://cites.org/eng/app/appendices.php

Author: Jian Er

Editor: Mai Mai

This article comes from the Species Calendar, welcome to forward

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