Why is Egypt, situated at the northeast corner of the African continent, so frequently discussed as part of the modern Middle East or Mashriq, rather than North Africa or the Maghrib? This paper looks to gendered forms of labor and their role in shaping broader historical affinities and identities to offer a partial response to this question. It draws upon archival material, women’s magazines, and cookbooks produced in Egypt between the 1950s and 1970s in order to trace the emergence of a Mashriqi culinary imaginary during this period. This “culinary imaginary,” the paper suggests, was part of a broader reenvisioning of the Arab world and its subregions –– and a shift that took place not only in formal politics but in popular culture and domestic spaces. Tracing the work of two central cookbook authors, Abla Nazira and Basima Zaki Ibrahim, I argue that over the course of their careers, domestic education specialists in midcentury Egypt developed an increasingly explicit curriculum of culinary nationalism -- with the intention of instructing Egyptian girls (and future wives and mothers) how best to nourish the nation. From the work of these writers and educators emerged two key tenets of this culinary nationalism. The first was a new definition of “good food” that was explicitly anticolonial, emphasizing the superiority of Egyptian cooking over British cooking. The second was transnational, accomplished through the diversification of recipes for dishes like mulukhiya, bamiya, and mahshi to include Shami and “Sharqi” variations alongside Egyptian versions of these dishes. The recipes these educators created are analyzed in their broader context, from magazines like Hawwa’ that celebrated pan-Arabism to the Egyptian High Institute for Home Economics, which explicitly proclaimed its role in building pan-Arab solidarities by “strengthening the ties of Arab sisterhood.” Overall, the paper argues that transnational movements and solidarities operated not only on the level of formal politics, economic strategy, or social movements but also through the sphere of everyday practices and domestic labor. It also offers a new perspective on the place of Egypt within broader conceptions of the modern Maghrib and Mashriq.