This Food in History #13 Shakshuka

Mar 16

Mar 16 This Food in History #13 Shakshuka

Hello and welcome to another episode of This Food in History! I’m Soph and today we are looking at a simple dish that is a popular breakfast in the Mediterranean countries! Shakshuka!

This dish is super simple to make. You heat up chopped tomatoes, other vegetables and spices in oil and poach eggs inside the sauce. Variations on the vegetables can be found all over the many countries surrounding the Mediterranean and middle east. You can even find versions that do not use tomatoes and use various greens instead. But where did this dish come from?

The vast majority of people report this as coming out of Northern Africa but from exactly which part and who seems to be a little up for discussion. Most things that I found named it as an Ottoman dish Şakşuka that was made of cooked vegetables and minced meat. I found a source that says the word shakshuka roughly can be translated to shaked or mixed up which is not technically wrong for how you make it. Some histories give its origins to Yemen while most give it to a Lybian-Tunisia background. Morocco also gets some shoutouts when discussing the origins.

Rafram Chaddad, Tunisian food historian, attributes the dish to the early peoples in Tunisia called the Amazigh. The origins he gives have it growing in the ‘Amazigh triangle' which consists in the area spanning a small part of eastern Algeria bordering Tunisia, southern Tunisia, and the north western part of Libya bordering Tunisia. The Amazigh people are descended from stone age tribes and are first mentioned in Ancient Egyption writing. They were separated from other African nations by the Saraha desert. The native language Tamazight has the word shakshak that means all mixed up. Rafram says that words with double consonants (like ‘couscous’) are typical of the Amazigh tongue; emphasizing the North African origins of both of these foods.This is in contrast with reports that the word more Arabic origins but the people and their word predate the eventual occupation from middle eastern tribes that assimilated the Amazigh people and their regions. They made stews out of seasonal vegetables in this same manner and these stews predate tomatoes coming in from trade routes with the New World so the earliest versions did not have tomatoes involved. Tomatoes wouldn’t have made an appearance as the main base until John Barker, the British consul to Aleppo’s stay in the region who is credited with cultivation of tomatoes in the area between 1799 and 1825.

While reading more, I found that the addition of eggs is influenced by Andalusian Muslims and Jewish people that came after exile from Christian Spain in the 15th and 16th century. Food historian, Charles Perry coined the term Moorish Ovomania to describe the abundant and prolific use of eggs in dishes that had a transformative effect on the Tunisian region. You can find a lot of dishes loaded with eggs from the region these days.

So now that we have variations of the origins, what happened next? This part seems to be relatively more agreed on though still not certain. We know we have vegetable stews all over the Northern African regions, but then it starts to grow out of this area into the Middle East and Spain and even Italy. Jewish tribes have the flag for this section. They brought it with them as they migrated or were expelled from these areas and up through the Middle East. We also see a version appear in Italy called ova m’priatorio (eggs purgatory) and eventually the Mexican huevos rancheros. Spain has pisto manchego which is a sunny side up egg on a stew of tomatoes, eggplants, peppers and spices.

While historians cannot agree on the origins, (Tunisia? Egypt?, Ottoman Empire> Amazigh?), the method for making it has always been remarkably similar. A thick vegetable stew with seasonal options for the region. And its draw has always been the simple and cheap preparation of the dish. This makes it popular among lower classes and something shared all over. Larger portion sizes are easy and the ingredients are cheap. Anyone can make this easily as is. Soaking up the vegetables and eggs with bread added to the filling nature of the dish, making it a near breakfast staple, especially during wartime rations.

Shakshuka comes in more variations than it has stories of its origins for such a simple dish. You can find it in homes and menus all over the world, especially in Jewish or Muslim households. Out of Northern Africa and spread to the world. This has been another episode of This Food in History. Please like and subscribe for more!