Podcast Summary

Podcast: New Books Network
Host: Dr. Miranda Melcher
Guest: Dr. Anny Gaul
Book: "Nile Nightshade: An Egyptian Culinary History of the Tomato" (University of California Press, 2025)
Release Date: December 4, 2025

Episode Overview

This episode features Dr. Anny Gaul discussing her forthcoming book, Nile Nightshade: An Egyptian Culinary History of the Tomato. The conversation explores how the tomato became central to Egyptian cuisine, the intertwined histories of agriculture, politics, class, and gender, and the tomato’s role as both commodity and culinary cornerstone. Gaul and Melcher also touch on oral histories, state food policies, and surprising entanglements with other ingredients—most notably okra—offering a nuanced, appetite-inducing look at Egyptian food culture.

Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. About the Author & Project Origins

• Background:
  Dr. Anny Gaul is an Assistant Professor of Arabic Studies at the University of Maryland and a former food blogger. She approaches food as tactile and experiential, merging academic research with practical cooking know-how.
  [03:09] D

• Why Focus on the Tomato:
  Gaul’s initial research for her dissertation (spanning Egypt and Morocco) left her with abundant material, but tomatoes "kept leaping off the page" in Egyptian sources. This single ingredient allowed her to write an “integrated food history” at the crossroads of political economy, social change, and taste.
  [03:37] D

  “Tomatoes…allowed me to write a different kind of food history…You’re focusing on something that’s not just an ingredient—it’s also a commodity, it’s a plant, it becomes…a political icon.”
  — Dr. Anny Gaul [04:17]

  • Following Sidney Mintz's approach in "Sweetness and Power," but seeking to further weave together material realities and cultural/gastronomic histories.
  • Example: The tomato’s rise in cookbooks mirrors expanded tomato cultivation, linked to major changes in southern Egyptian water management—“an enormous human cost,” including the displacement of Nubians to facilitate irrigation. [05:27] D

2. The Tomato’s Arrival in Egypt

• Global and Local Routes:

  • Unclear, but likely introduced during the Ottoman period (1517–1798).
  • First definitive record is from 1798, during Napoleon’s invasion, when botanists documented tomatoes already present in Egypt.
  • Tomatoes may have arrived via both Atlantic/Mediterranean and Indian Ocean trade and pilgrimage routes, suggesting Egypt’s culinary web is more global than just Mediterranean. [07:17–13:52] D

  “I think it’s very likely the tomato arrived to Egypt from both east and west, which just underscores… Egypt is connected…through so many other trade and pilgrimage routes.”
  — Dr. Anny Gaul [12:54]

• Tomato Popularity:

  • Early popularity is difficult to assess; likely became prominent with elites first before spreading more widely.
  • In 19th-century cookbooks and menus, tomatoes appear within Ottoman cuisine—suggesting adoption by upper classes before becoming mainstream. [14:40–16:53] D

3. From Novelty to Staple: The Tomato’s Rise

• Cultural and Economic Catalysts:
  • Tomatoes become increasingly visible as irrigation expands, especially following British-built dams from 1899–1929. Water from these projects favored northern agriculture, enabling year-round tomato production.
  • By 1929, tomatoes were grown in every province and had become the preeminent vegetable in Egypt.
  • The crop’s agricultural boom was partly due to demand for cash crops (like cotton), but tomatoes became a major export (e.g., via Alexandria). [19:11–21:24] D

4. The Question of "Staple" Status

• Tomatoes vs. State-Sanctioned Staples:

  • Despite cultural and culinary dominance, tomatoes are not considered a subsidized staple by the Egyptian state; subsidies have focused on calories and protein (bread, wheat, oil, rice).
  • The result is that tomato prices are volatile and less regulated than bread—leading to social, economic, and even cultural upheaval or complaint. [23:34–26:39] D

  “Egypt’s state subsidy system…was built to prioritize calories and protein…Tomatoes…play a much larger role in providing flavors…but they don’t have that subsistence importance that bread does.”
  — Dr. Anny Gaul [24:05]

• Volatility and Popular Culture:

  • Tomato prices fluctuate wildly due to perishability, transport limits, and merchant collusion.
  • The street vendor’s call "magnuna ya utah" (crazy tomatoes) embeds complaint about these unstable prices in popular vernacular. [26:39–31:04] D

  “The street cry that vendors use to advertise tomatoes is ‘magnuna ya utah’—crazy tomatoes—and that’s a reference to the price. You say that in Egypt and people know what you’re talking about.”
  — Dr. Anny Gaul [29:10]

  • Reference to a 1957 film whose plot revolves around tomato price-fixing, so true to life that real merchants sued the filmmaker.

5. Cookbooks, Gender, and Culinary Modernity

• Evolution of Egyptian Cookbooks:

  • The earliest printed cookbooks (late 19th–early 20th centuries) were written by and for men.
  • By the 1930s–1970s, a new domestic cookbook genre emerged—by women for women—mirroring global trends.
  • Many Egyptian cookbook authors trained in England at domestic science colleges, importing but also reinterpreting imperial culinary education. [31:26–34:07] D

  “Egyptian students…were the only examples I saw of countries that actually sent people to the metropole to study, and then they came back and established…textbooks, institutions…So there’s this really interesting kind of colonial dimension to their training, but it was happening on different terms.”
  — Dr. Anny Gaul [33:13]

• Class Politics of Cookbooks:

  • These books target a middle class, often for kitchens without staff, reflecting a shift in class and gender roles.

• The Tomato’s Culinary Flexibility:

  • Tomatoes are suited for stews, add prized umami flavor, and serve as ingredient, flavoring, and cooking medium—integral to modern Egyptian cuisine, especially in local/Arab (not European) recipes. [34:47–37:53] D

6. Oral Histories: Embodying Culinary Knowledge

• Interviews and Cooking Practices:

  • Oral histories reveal richer, more nuanced understandings than written sources.
  • Help uncover practical history (e.g., pre-blender techniques for liquefying tomatoes), gestures, utensils, and transmission lines for culinary knowledge. [38:21–46:34] D

• Intergenerational and Intragenerational Knowledge:

  • Culinary knowledge isn’t always passed mother-to-daughter; it may skip generations or move horizontally among peers/neighbors, reflecting rural-urban migrations and changing domestic roles.

  “You talk to people who actually took those classes or had those cookbooks, and they’re like, well, we never took that seriously. You really learned to cook from other people.”
  — Dr. Anny Gaul [44:29]

7. Okra: Counterpoint and Connection

• Why a Chapter on Okra?:

  • Okra (bamia) with tomato sauce is now the ‘default’ Egyptian okra dish, solidified by the 1930s.
  • Yet, pre-tomato okra recipes—like wica (okra dried and ground, associated with Upper Egypt and Sudan)—persist, challenging the notion that tomatoes totally eclipsed earlier traditions.
  • Migration led to recipes like wica circulating through Cairo, blurring lines between “northern” and “southern” food cultures. [47:46–54:44] D

  “The history of okra…reminds us that as popular as the tomato became, its hegemony in the Egyptian kitchen was never complete, it was never total.”
  — Dr. Anny Gaul [55:15]

  • The intertwining of recipes reflects historical factors (state investments, migration, water management) and culinary exchange.

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On writing food history around a single ingredient:

  “An advantage of building the narrative around a single item like the tomato is that you’re focusing on something that’s not just an ingredient, it’s also a commodity, it’s a plant, it becomes, in Egypt, a political icon.”
  — Dr. Anny Gaul [04:17]

• On the “crazy” tomato prices:

  “The street cry that vendors use to advertise tomatoes is ‘magnuna ya utah’—crazy tomatoes—and that’s a reference to the price.”
  — Dr. Anny Gaul [29:10]

• On oral history’s role:

  “Interviewing people about food, talking to them about food, having them narrate food in their own words, and then watching them cook really reveals a lot that you can’t always get from written sources.”
  — Dr. Anny Gaul [38:21]

• On okra’s tangled history:

  “The history of okra…reminds us that as popular as the tomato became, its hegemony in the Egyptian kitchen was never complete, it was never total.”
  — Dr. Anny Gaul [55:15]

Important Segment Timestamps

| Timestamp | Segment/Topic | |-------------|----------------------------------------------| | 03:09–06:55 | Gaul’s background and methodology | | 07:17–13:52 | The tomato’s arrival and global entanglements| | 14:40–19:11 | Tomato’s ascent from novelty to staple | | 23:34–26:39 | State policies, subsidies, and staple status | | 26:39–31:04 | Price volatility, merchants, and pop culture | | 31:26–37:53 | Cookbook history and gender/class intersections| | 38:21–46:34 | Oral histories and cooking practice | | 47:46–55:15 | Okra as counterpoint; recipes and migration |

Conclusion & Next Projects

• Current and Future Work:
  • Bibliography of Palestinian foodways on Jadaliyya
  • Forthcoming book on domesticity, class, and gender across North Africa
  • Co-authored article on Afghan cookbooks and the transregional flow of domestic science [56:09–57:47] D

Key Takeaways for Listeners

• The tomato’s journey into Egyptian cuisine reveals a web of colonial history, political economy, gender, and migration.
• What we take as “traditional” or “dominant” in a cuisine is layered, with elements of the past often surviving in parallel with the new—just as okra dishes with and without tomato coexist.
• Oral histories and embodied knowledge are crucial to a true understanding of food culture.
• Policies, economics, and daily life are deeply reflected in—sometimes refracted by—the humble tomato.

Book for further reading:
Nile Nightshade: An Egyptian Culinary History of the Tomato by Dr. Anny Gaul (University of California Press, 2025).