Dora’s Recipe last week opened up a can of worms. Should Taramosalata be white or should it be pink?

Taramosalata should be white, end of debate. Real taramosalata that is. If you find yourself dipping a hot pita into pink dip then you can be guaranteed it has been proceesed and has been saturated with food colourings. Bought tarama from your supermarket, sometimes also called cavier dip, appears pink. Because of this, people are creating an assumption that tarama is supposed to be pink. Why pink? Because fish roe is red, and when mixed with the bread and olive oil it needs to form the dip, it can sometimes take on a pink tinge, which has then been exaggerated to be a pastel pink.

This pink colour is what we assume tarama should look like. But, as people are creating more hearty, homely and traditional foods, and thanks to George Calombaris’s cookbook Greek Cookery from the Hellenic Heart – which has a recipe for taramosalata with a picture of the white dip as it should be and a blurb from George himself reiterating the point – people are becoming familiar with the traditional taramosalata. The white taramosalata.

White = one: Pink = Zero!