Egyptian Jewish cuisine was fundamentally shaped by the peregrinations of the Jews in that part of the world. It kept the imprint of local culinary traditions, while maintaining an overall Mediterranean flavor within the framework of Jewish dietary laws and the richness of Sephardic ritual.

There was a continuous Jewish presence in Egypt for over twenty-five centuries. However, during Egypt’s “cosmopolitan moment” (Naguib, p. 37) between the 1840s and the 1950s, and unlike other Jewish communities in Arab lands, Egyptian Jewry grew mainly …