Shakshouka

• 1. Introduction

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  Shakshouka is a dish of eggs cooked gently in a pan of tomato sauce, built on olive oil, peppers, onion and garlic. Cooks usually season it with cumin, paprika and cayenne pepper. It belongs to the Maghreb, the western stretch of North Africa, yet it is loved across North Africa and the Middle East. Order it in an English-speaking country and it appears on the breakfast menu. Order it in much of the Arab world or in Israel and it may arrive as the evening meal. How did a humble pan of eggs and tomatoes pick up so many names and so many homes? Where did the recipe begin, and who carried it across borders? And what happens when every cook in every country insists on adding something of their own?

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• 2. A Word That Sizzles

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  In Algerian Arabic, shakshuka is simply a word for a mixture. In Tunisian Arabic it means mixed. The name describes the pan before it describes any single ingredient.

  The Oxford English Dictionary traces the English word to more than one source. One is a Maghribi Arabic word that imitates a sound. It is tied to the verb shakshaka, which can mean to bubble, to sizzle, to be mixed up, or to be beaten together. Anyone who has heard eggs settling into hot sauce will understand why the sound won out.

  The second source is French. The word Chakchouka entered English in the nineteenth century, and French had itself taken it from Algerian Arabic. So the English word arrived by a double route, through Algeria and then through France. That detour leaves a question the dictionary cannot answer. Was the dish itself an Arab invention, or did it come from somewhere else entirely?

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• 3. A Family of Stews

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  The food writer Gil Marks saw a likeness between shakshouka and menemen, a dish from Turkey. He suggested that shakshouka grew out of an older dish called şakşuka. In his account, the influence of the Ottoman Empire carried it to the Maghreb.

  Anthony Buccini took a wider view. He noticed resemblances among many vegetable stews around the Mediterranean. Together with Noam Sienna, he concluded that shakshouka and menemen share ancestry with piperade and ratatouille. All of them, on this reading, belong to one family of vegetable stews found across the western Mediterranean.

  That family tree makes the dish less a single invention than a branch of a shared kitchen tradition. Still, one branch of shakshouka's story is much easier to date than the ancient ones, and it starts with a mass movement of people.

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• 4. The Road to Israel

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  In the 1950s, Maghrebi Jews migrated to Israel, and they brought shakshouka with them. The dish was then widely adopted by the people who lived there.

  That adoption was new. Shakshouka had not previously been associated with Palestinian or Levantine cooking. It was an arrival, not a local tradition that had been waiting to be rediscovered.

  It took decades to reach the restaurant table. Shakshouka began appearing in Israeli restaurants in the 1990s. A home dish from North Africa had become something a diner could expect to find on a menu. The next question is what, exactly, a diner would find, because in the Maghreb itself no two kitchens agree.

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• 5. Across North Africa

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  In Algeria, shakshouka is commonly served as a side dish, and cooks there make countless versions, each with its own mix of ingredients. One version is hmiss, often served with the traditional bread called kesra. Hmiss typically combines grilled peppers, tomatoes and garlic.

  Next door in Tunisia, a similar dish is called slata meshouia. It differs from hmiss by adding onions, cumin and tuna. Tunisian cooks may also put potatoes, broad beans, artichoke hearts or courgettes into the dish.

  In Morocco, a dish known as bīḍ w-maṭiša carries a name that simply means egg and tomato. In Syria, a dish called jaz maz pairs eggs with tomatoes, and people sometimes call it shakshouka too.

  Egypt has its own careful method. Cooks soften onions, garlic and chopped bell peppers in a pan. They add chopped tomatoes or tomato paste, then spices such as cumin, paprika and chili powder. When the sauce has thickened, they crack eggs straight into it. The whites set while the yolks stay runny. Parsley and cilantro go on top, sometimes with a sprinkle of domiati cheese.

  Egyptians usually scoop it up with warm eish baladi bread, and it is a favorite breakfast there. Beyond the Mediterranean coast of Africa, the same idea travels further still.

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• 6. What Goes in the Pan

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  The basic sauce leaves room for endless adjustment, in spice and in sweetness. Some cooks stir in preserved lemon, salty sheep milk cheeses or olives. Others add harissa, or a spicy sausage such as chorizo or merguez.

  The eggs offer a choice as well. They are commonly poached, but they can be scrambled instead, as in the Turkish menemen.

  Other versions go in a heartier direction. Some use lamb mince, toasted whole spices, yogurt and fresh herbs. The spice list can include ground coriander, caraway, paprika, cumin and cayenne pepper. A North African dish called matbukha can serve as the base of the sauce.

  The idea also appears far from the Maghreb. In Andalusian cuisine, the dish is known as huevos a la flamenca, and it includes chorizo and serrano ham. In Italy, a version is called uova in purgatorio, which means eggs in purgatory. It adds garlic and either basil or parsley. Even so, the pan means something different depending on when it reaches the table.

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• 7. Breakfast, Supper, Sabbath

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  Because eggs are the star, English-speaking countries tend to list shakshouka among the breakfast dishes. In the Arab world and in Israel, it is also a popular evening meal. It sits beside hummus and falafel as a Levantine favorite.

  Side dishes shape the meal. Pickled vegetables might come alongside it, or merguez, the North African sausage. Sometimes there is only bread, with mint tea to drink.

  In Jewish households, shakshouka also fits the rhythm of the week. A cook may make a large batch of tomato stew on Friday for the Sabbath dinner. On Sunday morning, the leftovers become breakfast. Warm the stew, crack in the eggs, and the meal returns in a new form, two days after the candles were lit.

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