Counterfeit Caviar

Servants of the czars used roe of lesser quality to polish up the royal shoe leather, while their masters downed the finer grades with vodka. Today Russian caviar commands princely prices in leading restaurants (up to $20 an ounce) and graces gourmet tables the world over--though rarely in the Soviet Union. Because of Moscow's need for hard currency, most of the 96 tons of gray-black sturgeons' eggs it produces annually are exported, bringing $5.9 million annually to the Kremlin's coffers but leaving little chance for the ordinary Russian to enjoy his national delicacy.

Until now, that is. Attacking this problem of economics and national pride with chemistry, researchers at the Soviet Academy of Sciences have found a way to make a caviar substitute out of milk, and the Ministry of Fisheries has opened a pilot production line in Moscow to try it out. Located in a corner of a large fish processing plant on the banks of the Moscow Canal, the line is a 60-ft. stretch of stainless-steel tanks, plunging pistons and gurgling agitators, ending in a conveyor belt that delivers small jars labeled CAVIAR--PROTEIN--FRESH. Although the facility turns out only 440 lbs. a day, bigger plants are on the drawing boards.

Soviet scientists had been trying to find a suitably cheap, protein-based caviar substitute for more than a decade. Most sturgeons--huge fish that can weigh more than 1,000 lbs.--are caught in the Caspian Sea. But as a result of a drop in water level and rising industrial pollution at the Russian end of the sea, the Soviet sturgeon catch has been dwindling, while Iran's production has remained steady. After experimenting with other possible bases for a caviar substitute, the Russian chemists settled on casein, a protein found in curdled milk. Explains Chemist Vladimir Tolstogouzov: "Soybean protein is cheaper, but casein is best for making this exquisite product."

The Russians first mix the casein with gelatin to produce a kind of porridge. This is poured into a steel centrifuge and mechanically agitated until the mixture emerges as a mound of little white pellets. The pellets are then laced with quantities of sturgeon sperm (for authentic taste), bathed with tannin extracted from tea leaves and stems (for color) and finally given a salty bath (the same preservative used on natural caviar).

Connoisseurs find the product slightly mushy, even when consumed with vodka. But at $5.90 a lb., compared with $24.50 for the real thing, there has been nothing soft about initial sales of the fake caviar. At the Okean (Ocean) fish store on Moscow's Prospekt Mira, where the pilot plant's output is sold, every scrap of the entire daily production sells out in only two hours.

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