Best Culinary History Book in the World, Gourmand World Cookbook Awards 2025 “Leaves few cultural-societal stones unturned in chronicling how the tomato gradually came to be a constant presence in Egyptian life.”—The Wall Street Journal  A cultural and culinary history of modern Egypt through the nation's beloved tomato.    By the end of the twentieth century, the tomato—indigenous to the Americas—had become Egypt's top horticultural crop and a staple of Egyptian cuisine. The tomato brought together domestic consumers, cookbook readers, and home cooks through a shared culinary culture that sometimes transcended differences of class, region, gender, and ethnicity—and sometimes reinforced them.   In Nile Nightshade, Anny Gaul shows how Egyptians' embrace of the tomato and the emergence of Egypt's modern national identity were both driven by the modernization of the country's food system. Drawing from cookbooks, archival materials, oral histories, and vernacular culture, Gaul follows