Why Not Every Fish Egg Is Called Caviar

A spoonful of salmon eggs and a spoonful of sturgeon eggs are both roe. Under a current international food standard, only one is caviar.

The distinction is not about colour, price or the size of the pearl. It begins with the fish. The Codex Alimentarius standard for sturgeon caviar, adopted in 2010 and amended in 2024, defines caviar as eggs from fish in the Acipenseridae family treated with food-grade salt. That family contains the sturgeons.

This makes “caviar” a narrower word than casual menu language sometimes suggests.

Cover illustration: a conceptual white line comparison of a sturgeon, another fish and their roe. It is not a species identification plate, and the eggs are not drawn to scale.

The family boundary

The Codex standard names four sturgeon genera: Acipenser, Huso, Pseudoscaphirhynchus and Scaphirhynchus, including hybrids of those genera. Its product definition also sets a salt content from 3 to 5 grams per 100 grams in the finished product. Species and preparation both matter.

The same document explains how familiar names fit inside that boundary. Beluga accompanies Huso huso. Ossetra accompanies Acipenser gueldenstaedtii and Acipenser persicus. Sevruga accompanies Acipenser stellatus. A hybrid should be identified as a hybrid, while local law and custom still govern the name used where the product is sold.

Those details do not turn the word into a flavour grade. They identify what the product is. Beluga, Ossetra and Sevruga point towards species, not an automatic ranking of every tin.

What happens to salmon and lumpfish?

They remain roe, and they may be excellent foods in their own right. They simply sit outside this particular definition. The Codex food-category database separates sturgeon caviar from other fish-roe products. Its examples include salted salmon roe, ikura, tarako and lumpfish caviar.

An FAO review of sturgeons and their trade uses the category “caviar substitutes” for non-sturgeon roe, while also naming distinct preparations such as bottarga, tarama and tobikko. “Substitute” describes a market category in that report. It is not a verdict that one food lacks its own history or culinary value.

The adjective does real work

Naming practice is not identical everywhere. In the United States, a current draft guidance for FDA staff says the unqualified word “caviar” should apply only to sturgeon roe. Roe from another fish may use the word if the fish is stated, with the agency giving the pattern “_____ caviar.” The FDA guidance therefore makes the qualifier essential rather than decorative.

The agency’s seafood substitution page is even more direct: it lists paddlefish and other fish roe being sold as caviar from sturgeon species as a potential substitution. The point is identity, not whether the alternative tastes good.

So “salmon caviar” and “caviar” are not interchangeable labels in that guidance. The first tells you which fish supplied the eggs. The second, left unqualified, points to sturgeon.

That is why the smallest word on a tin can carry the most useful information. Before judging colour or pearl size, read the species. Then read the producer, origin and treatment. A name cannot tell you how a particular spoonful will taste, but it can tell you what you are about to taste.

For the rest of the label, continue with How to Read a Caviar Tin.