ROE

ROE is often the answer to the crossword clue
[Fish eggs] or [Cavier]

One of the classic staples of Chez Crossword Puzzle is a tiny serving of ROE, often described on the menu as [Fish eggs] or [Caviar]. Sometimes, the [Tiny spoonful, of a sort] are labeled as [Lobster eggs] or [Potential perch].

Crosswords’ chef de cuisine might salt-cure some ROE and dish it up as [Caviar] or a [Taramasalata ingredient].

When baby [Fish spawn] evil clues…

But be careful: clues for these [Good eggs?] may be bad eggs. For instance, [Fish delicacy] could order up either ROE or EEL. And besides ROE, [Eggs] or [Fish spawn] might indicate OVA, the oft-appearing plural of ovum.

As a crossword answer, ROE are also prone to be enrolled as [Preschoolers?], [School of the future?] or [New school?].

Perhaps you’d have to go to some new type of school to learn terms like the very rare synonym for ROE, [Raun].

A number of clues have described ROE along the lines of [Beluga output] or [Beluga delicacy]. I’m sort of amazed to find no record of it ever being clued as [Baby beluga?].

“Baby Beluga,” by the [One-named children’s singer], RAFFI

I’ve heard of beluga caviar and always thoughtlessly associated it with the whale. Only just now did it occur to me that something was amiss, as whales don’t lay eggs. Turns out it’s the roe of the beluga sturgeon, a fish found in the CASPIAN–referring here to the [Sea fed by the Volga], not [Prince of Narnia].

Sturgeon produce the itsy, dark ROE used in black caviar. The red stuff that’s a [Sushi topper] comes from fish like salmon and trout, and is seen as [Ikura, on a sushi menu]. Also popular in Russia, ikura takes its name from the икра (ikra), a general term in Russian for caviar or fish roe.

  • [Mentaiko, at a sushi bar], refers to pollock roe
  • [Uni, in sushi bars], refers to the gonads of male or female sea urchins. In English we use the word “roe” for both, or the more colorful option, “corals”
  • [Tobiko or kazunoko, on Japanese menus] refer to flying fish roe and herring roe, respectively
  • [Masago, e.g., at a sushi bar] is the roe of capelin, a type of smelt

The [Unidentified Richard] and the rarely identified [Type of deer]

ROE has also come to be used for the [Landmark 1973 Supreme Court case, informally], [___ v. Wade], after [Norma McCorvey’s alias in a famous court case].

Like “Doe,” “Roe” is used to conceal a real name, and used in aliases like John Roe, Jane Roe and Richard Roe in court. When they appear in puzzles, they’re further anonymized, and my look like [Jane ___, anonymous plaintiff], [Unidentified person in a suit], or [Unidentified Richard].

From Wikipedia:

The Oxford English Dictionary states that John Doe is “the name given to the fictitious lessee of the plaintiff, in the (now obsolete in the UK) mixed action of ejectment, the fictitious defendant being called Richard Roe”.
This usage is mocked in the 1834 English song “John Doe and Richard Roe”:
Two giants live in Britain’s land,
John Doe and Richard Roe,
Who always travel hand in hand,
John Doe and Richard Roe.
Their fee-faw-fum’s an ancient plan
To smell the purse of an Englishman,
And, ‘ecod, they’ll suck it all they can,
John Doe and Richard Roe …

ROE: a deer, a doe roe via gefrorene_wand

Like “doe,” ROE is also associated with deer; specifically, it’s a type of [Eurasian deer]. And like “doe,” how the word for this small, agile, [Antlered ruminant] became associated with nameless parties in prosecutions is matter that not even the nimblest etymologist has yet pinned down.