This photochrome print showing a young girl preparing couscous with two companions under the watchful eye of an older woman in Algiers is part of “Views of People and Sites in Algeria” from the catalog of the Detroit Publishing Company (1905). The photograph was taken in the courtyard of the Luce Ben Aben School of Arab Embroidery, an institution founded by a Frenchwoman in 1845 that sought to teach young girls skills and to make crafts that could be sold in international markets. Couscous is Algeria’s national dish and the staple food of much of the country. According to some sources, semolina wheat reached Algeria as early as the Carthaginian period, enabling the Berbers to develop couscous already around the second century BC. Other sources say that couscous reached the country much later, through Andalusians in the 13th century.