Nile Nightshade - (California Studies in Food and Culture) by Anny Gaul (Paperback)

About the Book

"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"-- Provided by publisher.

Book Synopsis

A 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.

From the Back Cover

"I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. It adds a fresh and original dimension to the study of modern Egypt."--Marilyn Booth, author of The Career and Communities of Zaynab Fawwaz: Feminist Thinking in Fin-de-Siècle Egypt

"Nile Nightshade provides a master class in food history by deftly and accessibly navigating a complex political, culinary, and linguistic story through a now-common vegetable. By prioritizing the kitchen, Anny Gaul produces a new way of thinking about the building of national cuisines that traverses borders both imposed and imaginative."--Alicia Kennedy, author of No Meat Required: The Cultural History and Culinary Future of Plant-Based Eating

"Gaul's amazingly documented, engagingly erudite, and insightful story of how Egyptians made the tomato their own is a fascinating way to learn about Egypt: its history, agriculture, culinary culture, and people."--Claudia Roden, author of Claudia Roden's Mediterranean and The New Book of Middle Eastern Food

Review Quotes

"Nile Nightshade leaves few cultural-societal stones unturned in chronicling how the tomato gradually came to be a constant presence in Egyptian life. . . . It would be hard to find another writer who brings Ms Gaul's particular strengths to what could've been merely esoteric culinary-history trivialities."-- "The Wall Street Journal"

About the Author

Anny Gaul is Assistant Professor of Arabic Studies at the University of Maryland, College Park, and coeditor of Making Levantine Cuisine: Modern Foodways of the Eastern Mediterranean. She also runs the popular food blog Cooking with Gaul.