Since 1998 the Italian island of Sicily has been the unlikely host of the couscous-making world championship known as Cous Cous Fest, which bills itself as a “festival of cultural integration”.
Each September chefs travel to Sicily, whose Mediterranean location opposite Tunisia has made it a cultural crossroads throughout history, battling to be crowned couscous king or queen.
Palestinian chefs George Suheil Srour and Elias Bassous won the competition last year, with a couscous topped with grilled sea bream, pomegranate, and fennel crumble.
However, couscous has also long been eaten in Europe.
In France from the mid-20th century, an influx of North African labourers from colonial territories and French expats returning after decolonization helped popularize the dish.
But here too, couscous already had a history.
In his 1534 novel “Gargantua”, the French writer François Rabelais described banquets on tables featuring meats of all kinds, accompanied by soups and couscous.
The 1938 version of the Larousse Gastronomique, France’s hallowed food bible, featured an entire chapter on the dish.
Spain also has long been eating couscous, not least due to centuries of Moorish rule on the Iberian Peninsula.
“From the 10th century durum wheat was cultivated in Spain and couscous landed on the tables of the working classes,” write Hadjira Mouhoub and Claudine Rabaa in their book “The Adventures of Couscous”.
But the local aristocracy was rather partial too, they added – as related in the 13th-century cookbook “The Excellences of the Table”, by Spanish culinary expert Ibn Razin al-Tuyibi.