From Kitchen Arabic to Recipes for Good Taste: Nation, Empire, and Race in Egyptian Cookbooks

ABSTRACT

Between the 1880s and the 1950s, a new genre of cookbooks appeared in Egypt. Largely written by women, these texts addressed the housewives of Egypt’s expanding middle classes. This essay describes how the genre’s authors instructed women to nourish the nascent Egyptian nation. In prescribing specific flavors to notions of “good taste,” these cookbooks’ eclectic combinations of recipes oriented Egyptian readers towards Europe and the Arab East, rather than towards the rest of the African continent. This analysis situates these cookbooks within the overlapping spheres of Egyptian rule in Sudan, the British occupation of Egypt and Sudan, and anticolonial nationalism. It argues that studying gendered and domestic forms of labor, like cooking, can enrich our understandings of how national identity formation hinges on the construction of racial, ethnic, and class hierarchies. Cookbooks thus offer a unique perspective on the relationships between nation, empire, gender, and race.

KEYWORDS:

• Food history
• culinary history
• Arab cuisine
• cookbooks
• Egypt
• Sudan
• domestic science
• colonialism

Acknowledgments

For support and feedback, I would like to thank Francisco Barrenechea, Amira Howeidy, Tess Korobkin, Marjan Moosavi, Karin Rosemblatt, Alicia Volk, and Katherine Wasdin. I am grateful to Salma Serry for sharing bibliographical and other information about several of the titles that appear in the text and appendix of this article. Constructive feedback from peer reviewers and the editors of Global Food History strengthened the text considerably. I owe a particular debt of thanks to the booksellers of Cairo and Alexandria, especially Yousef Anwar.

Notes

1. Niqula and ʿUthman, Fundamentals of Cooking. All translations by author unless indicated otherwise. I reference this 1953 edition of the book throughout the article. Although first published in 1941 and reprinted into the 1980s, editions I have examined from the 1940s through the end of the 1950s appear virtually identical. Note that while the Appendix lists the date of each title’s first edition, within this article I cite the edition I consulted directly.

2. Niqula and ʿUthman, Fundamentals of Cooking.

3. The Arabic term mashriq, which has come to indicate the area popularly known as the Arab Middle East today, is derived from the word for east.

4. Of the 13 cookbooks I cite directly, nine are currently in my possession and four were accessed in libraries. For a discussion of consulting Egypt’s used book markets as a research method, see Ryzova, Age of the Efendiyya, 26–31.

5. Although the question of post-1980 Arabic cookbooks in Egypt merits further study, preliminary research suggests that after that point, cookbooks tend to address audiences beyond the explicit “housewife” of the books discussed here. Incidentally, the last reprinting of ʿUthman and Niqula’s famous book was in the early 1980s.

6. Cookbooks published after 1956, while in conversation with earlier works, are beyond the scope of this article.

7. Mennell, All Manners of Food, 84.

8. Willan, Cookbook Library, 194; emphasis in original.

9. Arjun Appadurai’s formative article, for example, focuses on Anglophone cookbooks. Harry Kashdan’s insightful study on Mediterranean cookbooks centers the dominance of the “Anglophone cultural imaginary” of the region’s cuisines. Jennifer Dueck’s work on Middle Eastern cookbooks analyzes English-language cookbooks and their North American contexts. Appadurai, “How to Make a National Cuisine”; Kashdan, “Anglophone Cookbooks”; Dueck, “Foreign Kitchens, Foreign Lands.”

10. Higashiyotsuyanagi, “Domestic Cookbooks”; Shkodrova, “From Duty to Pleasure”; Tominc, Discursive Construction; Fuster, “Writing Cuisine in the Spanish Caribbean”; Pite, Creating a Common Table; and Choudhury, “Palatable Journey.”

11. Smith, “Imagined Identities.”

12. Powell, Different Shade, 8.

13. The extensive corpus of Arabic medieval and early modern cookery manuscripts are more accessible than ever before through scholarship, Arabic critical editions, and translations. In addition to the scholarship of Manuela Marín and David Waines, see Mardam-Bey, Ziryab, first published in French in 1998; Rodinson, Arberry, and Perry, Medieval Arab Cookery; Zaouali, Medieval Cuisine; Ibn Sayyar al-Warraq, Annals of the Caliphs’ Kitchens; Scents and Flavors; Treasure Trove; and Shah, Sultan’s Feast.

14. Rodinson, “Arabic Manuscripts,” 104. On Arabic publishing during this period, see Ayalon, “Private Publishing.”

15. One exception is a recent study by Graham Auman Pitts and Michel Kabalan about Lebanese cookbooks. Maxime Rodinson’s landmark 1949 essay “Recherches sur les documents arabes relatifs a la cuisine,” published in English translation in 2006, gives bibliographic references for eleven printed cookbooks but only discusses two in detail; most of the essay is dedicated to medieval manuscript sources. Peter Heine’s essay about modern Arabic cookbooks primarily discusses Arabic-language texts published since the 1980s. Omar Taher’s book on key figures in modern Egyptian cultural history includes a chapter on Nazira Niqula, but other cookbook writers, including Niqula’s own coauthor, as Taher points out, remain in relative obscurity. Passing but significant references can be found in Jack Goody’s study of cuisine (which appears to rely largely upon Rodinson’s account and also focuses more on premodern Arab cuisines), Ami Ayalon’s work on early Arabic print culture, and Malak Rouchdy’s study of Arabic cookbooks in late twentieth-century Egypt. Pitts and Kabalan, “Kibbe;” Rodinson, “Arabic Manuscripts”; Goody, Cooking, Cuisine and Class; Ayalon, “Private Publishing,” 567; Rouchdy, “Food Recipes and Kitchen Space”; Heine, “Revival of Traditional Cooking,” 151; and Taher, “Abla Nazira.”

16. Saʿd, The Housewife, 94.

17. I have identified seven titles that fall into this category, but have only been able to access three of them directly–texts by Malaka Saʿd, Ibrahim ʿAbd al-Ra’uf, and Francis Mikhayil–in the Harvard University library and the National Library of Morocco. This section focuses on material from these three titles.

18. Russell, New Woman, ch. 6 (on girls’ education) and ch. 8 (on textbooks).

19. ʿAbd al-Ra’uf, Pearls, 287.

20. Rodinson, “Arabic Manuscripts,” 105.

21. I am adopting an approximation of Henry Notaker’s definition of a cookbook as “a book with about two-thirds cookery instruction and … at least 40–50% in recipe form,” thereby including a handful of books that are framed as household management guides but devote a significant percentage of their pages on kitchen management, cooking, and recipes. Willan, Cookbook Library, 1.

22. Baron, Women’s Awakening, 1.

23. Ibid.

24. Ibid., 71–2, 155–8; and Russell, New Egyptian Woman, 154.

25. Selim, “Nahda.” Selim’s approach to popular novels as a kind of “literary archive” has influenced my own study of Egyptian cookbooks. Selim, “Nahda,” 70–71.

26. Sometimes authors included direct references to cleaning products with French and English names, as one example; see Saʿd, The Housewife, 82–3.

27. Ibid., 13.

28. Russell, New Egyptian Woman, 145.

29. Saʿd, The Housewife, 248.

30. Russell, New Egyptian Woman, 138.

31. Pollard, “Promise of Things to Come,” 37.

32. Pollard, Nurturing the Nation, 122–3; and Baron, Egypt as a Woman, 1–6.

33. Saʿd, The Housewife, 5–6.

34. Ibid., 6.

35. El Shakry, “Schooled Mothers,” 157.

36. In the original Arabic the rhyme, between “durriya” and “siḥiyya,” is even closer.

37. ʿAbd al-Ra’uf, Pearls, 2.

38. Ibid., 3.

39. Saʿd, The Housewife, 151.

40. ʿAbd al-Ra’uf, Pearls, 120–121.

41. Saʿd, The Housewife, 185–189.

42. ʿAbd al-Ra’uf, Pearls, 302–5, 320.

43. Ryzova, Age of the Efendiyya, 24.

44. Najmabadi, “Crafting an Educated Housewife,” 102.

45. Mikhayil, Modern Household Management, 160. This book includes a list of other titles by the author, including one titled Servant and Master.

46. Saʿd, The Housewife, 97.

47. Ibid., 159.

48. Nasif, Women’s Writings, 109–10.

49. Ibid., 71; Hinds and Badawi, Dictionary of Egyptian Arabic, 740; Toledano, “Fusion,” 231.

50. Powell, Different Shade, 78–9; 154–55; Tell This, 115–147. For additional context on the ethnic and social makeup of the servant class in Egypt during this period, including the figure of the kudya, see Moore, “Betraying Behita.” For a discussion of the racialization of southern peasant women as an internal “other” in Egypt, see Takla, “Barbaric Women,” 390–93.

51. Hansen, African Encounters, 4.

52. For an account of the politics of literacy during this period in Egypt, see Yousef, Composing Egypt.

53. Ferguson, “Diglossia;” Badawi, “Educated Spoken Arabic,” 15. Spoken Arabic also varies significantly from one region to another, sometimes to the point of mutual unintelligibility.

54. Nakao, “Pidgins on the Nile,” 222; Sharkey, “Sudanese Arabic Bibles,” 41. Nubia is a Nile region along the Nile that spans part of present-day southern Egypt and northern Sudan.

55. For a discussion of gender and language ideology, see Haeri, Sacred Language, Ordinary People, 64–65; for representing racial difference through language, see Powell, Different Shade, 72–4.

56. Saʿd, The Housewife, 178.

57. Lentin, “Middle Arabic.”

58. Nasrallah, “Introduction,” 6–7.

59. Ibrahim, Eastern Cuisine, 4.

60. These are more commonly found in Egypt’s used book markets, where I located nine of the ten titles from this period cited here.

61. Ibrahim, Modern Pastry, 25. In another of her books Ibrahim includes a short paragraph on managing servants, but emphasizes that “management, order, cleanliness, proper arrangement, and coordination” are essential in a home with or without servants. At the back of the same book an advertisement identifies another title in her series as devoted to “a home without servants.” Ibrahim, Modern Cuisine, 5; 272.

62. Niqula and ʿUthman, Fundamentals of Cooking, 4.

63. Ibid.

64. “News of Egyptian Students,” “Celebrating the Egyptian Women’s Union.”

65. Ibrahim, Modern Pastry, 3.

66. Ibrahim, Modern Cuisine, 3.

67. Ibrahim, Modern Pastry, 6.

68. Ibid., 7.

69. Qutb, “New Books.”

70. Higashiyotsuyanagi, “Domestic Cookbooks,” 131–34; Sand, House and Home, 83.

71. Rodinson, “Arabic Manuscripts,” 108–9.

72. Pitts and Kabalan, “Kibbe,” 32–33.

73. Pite, Creating a Common Table, 7. I thank Eduardo Elena for calling my attention to Pite’s work.

74. Many Egyptian cookbooks of this era have more in common with Petrona’s particular culinary mix of influences than, for instance, the Turkish and Lebanese examples cited here; the latter, for instance, focused largely on rural culinary traditions.

75. Pite, Creating a Common Table, 9.

76. Moore, “Pharaohs.” See also El Shakry, Great Social Laboratory, 55–86.

77. Tayeb, “Whiteness in North Africa,” paragraphs 2–3.

78. Tompkins, Racial Indigestion, 7. See also Bégin, “‘Partaking of choice poultry.”

79. Niqula and ʿUthman, Fundamentals of Cooking, Part 2.

80. Niqula and ʿUthman, Sweets, 3.

81. Ibid. The verse in question is from Quran 2:172.

82. ʿAbd al-Hamid, Fundamentals of the Art of Cooking, 2.

83. Kholoussy, For Better, For Worse, ch. 4.

84. This is exemplified in one of Ibrahim’s introductions, which highlights the ascendance of French cuisine as a dominant international cooking style as well as her assessment that the cuisines of southern Europe are superior to those of northern Europe. Ibrahim, International Cuisine.

85. Ibrahim, Eastern Cuisine.

86. Rodinson, “Arabic Manuscripts,” 108.

87. Morphy, Recipes of All Nations.

88. Ibrahim, Modern Cuisine, 230.

89. Ibid., 4.

90. Ibid.

91. Berridge House, Cookery.

92. Niqula and ʿUthman, Fundamentals of Cooking, 42–43, 57, 65–66.

93. Ibid., 74, 101.

94. According to Nicola Humble, Eliza Acton (1799–1859) was the first to divide her recipes this way. Humble, Introduction, xiv.

95. For a discussion of overlapping conceptions of Egyptian and broader Eastern or Arab expressions of identity and nationhood, see Smith, “Imagined Identities.”

96. Roden, Jewish Food, 5–6; see also Kashdan, “Anglophone Cookbooks,” 4–6.

97. Taher, “Abla Nazira,” 125.

98. Niqula and ʿUthman, Sweets, 295–312.

99. Fahmi, Domestic Education: Cooking, 157, 162, 176.

100. Ibrahim, Modern Pastry, 98, 155.

101. Niqula and ʿUthman, Fundamentals of Cooking, 351, 484, 913.

102. ʿAbd al-Hamid, Fundamentals of the Art of Cooking, 29, 64–65.

103. Ibrahim, Eastern Cuisine, 473–74.

104. Powell, Different Shade, 2.

105. Qurunfuli, Modern Table, 5.

106. Ibid. The most complete record of publication information is available in the catalog of books acquired by Egypt’s national library, Dar al-Kutub, in 1949. A second edition was published in 1970 in Khartoum.

107. Young, Transforming Sudan, 34; Powell, Different Shade.

108. Qurunfuli, Modern Table, 6, 218.

109. Ibid., 6; Boddy, Civilizing Women, 41.

110. Boddy, Civilizing Women, 192.

111. Qurunfuli, Modern Table, 6.

112. Ibid.

113. Ibid.

114. Sharkey, “Arab Identity,” 23.

115. That said, in Egypt the privileging of Arab cultural and linguistic identity also entailed the marginalization and displacement of Nubians along with their culture and language as a part of Egypt’s nation-building efforts. See Abubakr, “Contradictions of Afro-Arab Solidarity(ies).”

116. Idris, Conflict and Politics, 31–32.

117. Ibid; Powell, Tell This, 65; Sharkey, “Arab Identity,” 29.

118. Sharkey, “Arab Identity,” 28–29.

119. On offering different employment based on identity, see ibid., 29; on the division of regions as “Arab” or “African,” see Young, Transforming Sudan, 35.

120. Idris, Conflict and Politics, 31–2; Sharkey discusses various means of Arabization and acquiring Arab identity in pre-independence Sudan, including “the acquisition of Arabic as a primary language,” “Arab Identity,” 22–3.

121. Sharkey, “Arab Identity,” 31–3.

122. Ibid., 33.

123. Young, Transforming Sudan, 77–8. Young describes how “the struggle for independence from Britain fractured into a multiparty contest between those who supported a unified Sudanese state or multiple Sudanese states, and those who believed that Sudan could best realize its independence as part of the Egyptian state.”

124. Powell, Different Shade, 17, 30–31; and El Shakry, Great Social Laboratory, 55–86.

125. Fathy, Egyptian Film Posters.

126. ʿAṣīda is a traditionally Arab dish typically prepared with rice or wheat flour; the Sudanese version, as reflected in Qurunfuli’s book, is made with sorghum flour instead. Nazira and ʿUthman’s encyclopedic Fundamentals of Cooking, the most comprehensive of the Egyptian cookbooks discussed here, includes wayka but none of the peanut dishes or any kind of ʿaṣīda.

127. Young, Transforming Sudan, 31.

128. Ibid., 30–31.

129. Humble, “Introduction,” xvi.

130. Appadurai, “How to Make a National Cuisine,” 22.

131. Powell, Different Shade, 19.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by a BSA-Pine Tree Foundation Fellowship in Culinary Bibliography from the Bibliographical Society of America, a Mellon International Dissertation Research Fellowship from the Social Science Research Council, a Multi-Country Grant from the Council of American Overseas Research Centers, a Pre-Dissertation Travel Grant from the American Research Center in Egypt, and a Dissertation Research Travel Grant from the Georgetown Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.

Notes on contributors

Anny Gaul

Anny Gaul is an assistant professor of Arabic Studies at the University of Maryland, College Park. Her research and teaching interests include food history, modern Arabic literature, and gender and feminist studies. She is co-editor of the forthcoming volume Making Levantine Cuisine: Modern Foodways of the Eastern Mediterranean (University of Texas, 2021) and is currently writing a book about the history of the tomato in modern Egypt.