Claudia Roden

Claudia Roden CBE (née Douek; born 1936) is an Egyptian-born British cookbook writer and cultural anthropologist of Sephardi/Mizrahi descent.

[2][3][5][7][8] Roden was born in 1936 in Cairo, Kingdom of Egypt, the daughter of Cesar Elie Douek and his wife Nelly Sassoon.

[11] She did not return to Egypt for a quarter of a century, well after her family and most of Cairo's Jewish community had been expelled; many of her books reflect her longing for the close communal culture that was lost, especially as expressed in the culinary arts and social occasions associated with them.

"[6] Her many cookbooks, Clark writes, have "produced a genre of works that is at once literary and deeply researched while still being, at heart, practical manuals on how to make delicious meals.

"[6] Besides her numerous cookery volumes, Roden has also worked as a food writer and a cooking show presenter for the BBC.

Claudia Roden (right) and Paul Levy (centre) among panellists at the Oxford Symposium, 2006