Chakchouka

What it is

Peppers and tomatoes cooked down with garlic and spice into a loose, jammy base, usually finished with eggs poached in the surface. Regional versions vary in how far the vegetables are cooked and whether egg appears at all.

Known locally as شكشوكة.

Traditional tomato

Not identifiable to a named cultivar. Ordinary ripe cooking tomatoes; the dish is defined by the pepper-to-tomato ratio, not by variety.

Method

Not yet cooked and tested by the desk, so there is no method here. We would rather print nothing than a recipe we have not made.

Origins

A Maghrebi dish shared across Algeria and Tunisia with local variations, and widely eaten across the region and its diaspora. Both peppers and tomatoes are post-Columbian arrivals, so the dish in its current form cannot predate the sixteenth century.

Field notes

No field notes filed from Algeria yet.

The Ledger

No cook or grower has yet put a record against this dish. When one does, the varieties actually used will appear here — with who recorded them and how firmly.

Audio dispatches

No dispatch has been recorded around this dish yet.

Sources

• Tomato — Solanum lycopersicum, history and spread — Encyclopaedia Britannica, accessed 2026-08-09

Documented by The Tomato Post desk · last checked 2026-08-09 · The Tomato Post is not a ratings or review platform