Shakshuka

Shakshuka is a Maghrebi dish of eggs poached in a spiced sauce of tomatoes, olive oil, peppers, onion and garlic, typically seasoned with cumin, paprika and cayenne pepper, and eaten today across North Africa and the Middle East. Food historians differ on exactly how it developed: some trace it to the Ottoman dish saksuka, which spread into the Maghreb under Ottoman influence, while others place it within a broader family of related Mediterranean vegetable and egg stews that also includes Turkish menemen, Basque piperade and French ratatouille, all likely sharing common roots rather than one dish descending directly from another. The dish was not historically part of Palestinian or Levantine cooking; it reached Israel in the 1950s with Jewish immigrants from Tunisia, Algeria and Libya and only became common on Israeli restaurant menus in the 1990s, from where it has since spread onto English-language breakfast menus worldwide. Because its history runs through Ottoman, Maghrebi and Levantine Jewish kitchens together, shakshuka is best described as a shared regional dish rather than the invention of a single country.