Black caviar is the roe of sturgeon: beluga, osetra, sevruga, sterlet. Red is salmon roe. The difference is not only the price: sturgeon tastes creamy and nutty, salmon is more direct and saltier, with an iodine note.
What to look at
The eggs should be whole and separate from one another rather than merging into a paste. Cloudy liquid at the bottom and a smell of fish mean the tin was stored badly; good caviar smells of the sea and cream, not of fish.
The larger the egg, the dearer: beluga eggs are the size of a pea and almost grey, sevruga smaller and darker. Colour does not follow size and says little about quality — pale beluga costs more than dark by tradition, not by taste.
Salt and pasteurisation
«Lightly salted» means up to five per cent salt: a cleaner taste and a shorter life. Pasteurised keeps longer and travels well, but the heat firms up the egg and dulls the flavour. For the table take unpasteurised; for a gift to another city, the opposite.
What to eat it with
Not silver and not steel: metal oxidises caviar and leaves a taste in the few seconds it spends on the spoon. Mother-of-pearl, bone, horn or plain glass — anything but metal will do.
How to serve it
Cold but not frozen: the tin goes into ice, not into the freezer. To accompany it — blini, toast or boiled potatoes; sour cream and lemon belong with red roe, and they only muffle a good black one.
To drink — chilled brut sparkling wine or vodka. The first refreshes and cuts the fat, the second does not argue with the taste at all; a sweet sparkling wine turns cloying next to caviar.