Nile Nightshade: An Egyptian Culinary History of the TomatoA cultural and culinary history of modern Egypt through the nation's beloved tomato. By the end of the twentieth century, the tomato—indigenous to the Americas—had become Egypt's top horticultural crop and a staple of Egyptian cuisine. The tomato brought together domestic consumers, cookbook readers, and home cooks through a shared culinary culture that sometimes transcended differences of class, region, gender, and ethnicity—and sometimes reinforced them. In Nile Nightshade, Anny Gaul shows how Egyptians' embrace of the tomato and the emergence of Egypt's modern national identity were both driven by the modernization of the country's food system. Drawing from cookbooks, archival materials, oral histories, and vernacular culture, Gaul follows this commonplace food into the realms of domestic policy and labor through the hands of Egypt's overwhelmingly female home cooks. As they wrote recipes and cooked meals, these women forged key aspects of public culture that defined how Egyptians recognized themselves and one another as Egyptian. |
Contents
Introduction | 1 |
From Mexico to Misr | 22 |
The Mediterranean Sea | 27 |
The Indian Ocean | 34 |
African eggplant | 49 |
Baladi tomato | 61 |
Tomato consumption in Egypt 195859 196465 and 197475 | 76 |
Tomato production in Egypt 196194 | 85 |
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Common terms and phrases
African eggplant al-hadith al-manzili al-tamatim baladi bamiya bread British Cairene chapter Chile Pepper Columbian Exchange cookbook authors cookbooks crops culinary knowledge culinary public describes Dimyat domestic cookbooks domestic science Eastern edited eggplant Egyptian Agriculture Egyptian Arabic Egyptian cookbook Egyptian cooking Egyptian cuisine elite European feddans flavor food system home cooks home kitchen Ibn Battuta Ibrahim Indian Ocean Indian Ocean world ingredients Interview koshari labor Levantine Cuisine Maghribi meat Mediterranean merchants metric tons Ministry of Agriculture Misr Moriscos mulukhiyya Naguib narratives Nasrallah Nicola and Osman Nile nineteenth Nubian okra dishes okra recipes onions oota oral histories Ottoman Political Vegetables popular Portuguese practices quta red okra Red Sea refer Sadowski salsa samna shakshuka social stews tamatim tasbika taste technique texts tion tomato production tomato sauce trade Turkish twentieth century University Press Upper Egypt urban Usul al-tahi weeka white okra women word