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

Abstract

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.