Egyptian History and its Many Cuisines: An Exploration of Egyptian Food History

May 29, 2021 1PM ET/ 7PM EET

(Registration form below) 

Speaker: Dr. Mennat-Allah El Dorry 

This lecture includes a drink recipe to prepare before the lecture and enjoy during the Q&A– find the recipe HERE

Lecture Information:

Artist’s rendition of a medieval Cairene market by M. El Sokkari. Courtesy of Rawi Magazine

What is Egyptian cuisine? It is an amalgamation of thousands of years of culinary innovations, technological developments, and new crops and flavors. Egyptian cuisine(s) change(s) from one region to the next, and from one time period to another. This talk will explore the cuisines of each phase of Egyptian history, identifying some of the highlights or developments of each time period, starting with ancient Egypt and through to the 20th century. It will also investigate the transformations, and how these may or may not have had an impact on the face of today’s Egyptian food. The paper will also survey the different sources that scholars have available in order to study the history of Egyptian cuisine. 

About Mennat-Allah El Dorry:

El Dorry has a PhD in Egyptology with a focus on archaeobotanical analysis (2015). Her research revolves around food and trying to reconstruct how people in the past cooked, ate, and how food played a role in their social and religious lives. She has worked extensively on the field as an archaeologist, surveyor, illustrator, and archivist. She is affiliated with the Ministry of Antiquities, where she has served as head of the Minister’s Scientific Office (2016-17). El Dorry also served as a postdoctoral research fellow at the French and Polish Archaeological Institutes in Cairo, where she organized an international conference on food and drink in Egypt and Sudan, in addition to undertaking her own research on food history (2017-18). She was the guest editor of Rawi Magazine’s Food History edition (2019). 

Registration will close 24 hours before the lecture starts. Registration does not include any future lectures in this series.