Belly up to a bar in 19th-century New York, and chances are you would have been standing close to a bowl of caviar serving peanut duty on the counter to encourage a profitable thirst among the punters. The glistening beads would not have made the long haul from Persia or Imperial Russia. They would have been fished from wild sturgeon undulating their way up the Delaware, Columbia and Hudson Rivers of the east coast of the United States.
By the end of the "Gay '90s", the United States was the largest caviar producer in the world, processing over 600 tons a year. It shipped most of its product to Europe, where Russian caviar labels were stuck on and much of it imported back into the United States. Nearly 90 percent of so-called Russian caviar sold in Europe and the United States in fact came from the Delaware River. Until the American sturgeon was fished to near extinction in the early 1900s, around 150,000 pounds of caviar were harvested annually from native waterways. The meat of the plundered fish became a mainstay of the local diet known as "Albany beef." Young boys played football in the streets of New York with the large sturgeon muzzles.
Containing 47 vitamins and minerals, caviar is one of the most nutrionally complete foods. The ancient Persians, who believed it cured a ream of ailments, called it "Chav-Jar", or "Cake of Power", and consumed it regularly to improve their stamina. They probably didn't eat as much as Czar Nicholas II of Russia, who taxed sturgeon fishermen eleven tons of top-grade caviar annually. Organized caviar production even took place on the Gironde in 18th-century France, under the auspices of Jean-Baptiste Colbert, minister to Louis XVI of France.
