Samosa
↔ Varies by recipeA samosa is a fried or baked turnover with a savoury filling, usually spiced potato, onion, peas or lentils, though meat or fish versions are also common. Shaped as a triangle, cone or crescent depending on the region, it is one of the most widespread stuffed pastries, found from East Africa to western China, and remains a staple snack across the Indian diaspora.
History
The samosa is thought to descend from a medieval pastry of the Middle East and Central Asia that was baked rather than deep-fried. Its name comes from the Middle Persian sanbosag, meaning a triangular pastry. The earliest known mention is a poem by the Abbasid-era poet Ishaq al-Mawsili, who praised the sanbusaj. Arabic cookery books of the 10th to 13th centuries record recipes under names such as sanbusak, sanbusaq and sanbusaj, all tracing back to the same Persian root. In Iran the dish was widely eaten until the 16th century, after which it survived mainly in certain provinces.
The Iranian historian Abu'l-Fadl Bayhaqi, who lived in the eleventh century, mentions it in his Tarikh-i Bayhaqi. Between the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the Central Asian samsa reached the Indian subcontinent through cooks from the Middle East and Central Asia working in the royal kitchens of the Delhi Sultanate. Around 1300 the poet Amir Khusrau wrote that princes and nobles enjoyed a samosa made with meat, ghee and onion. The traveller Ibn Battuta describes a small meat-and-nut pie served at the court of Muhammad bin Tughluq before the pulao course. Medieval texts such as the Nimmatnama-i-Nasiruddin-Shahi and the Ain-i-Akbari also record the dish under local names.
Its savoury taste and portable shape made it a practical snack for workers and travellers in India, Pakistan and Central Asia. From there it spread to Southeast Asia, East Africa and the Horn of Africa, and later reached Europe and the Americas through migration and trade.
Culture
Across the Indian subcontinent the samosa is a street snack and casual meal, usually served hot with green chutney made from mint, coriander or tamarind. In many cities it appears as chaat, topped with yogurt, chickpeas, chopped onion and chaat masala. Delhi, Punjab and Uttar Pradesh favour a larger version with fillings of spiced potato, peas, green chillies or paneer. In Bengal and Odisha the same snack is called shingara or singara; it is typically triangular and crisper, and comes in variations such as cauliflower, lamb, fish or sweet coconut. Hyderabad eats a smaller lukhmi with a thicker crust and minced meat, while southern India folds the pastry differently, closer to the Portuguese chamuça.
In Pakistan, samosas vary by region: those in Karachi are spicy, those in Faisalabad are unusually large, and the kaghazi samosa of Karachi has a thin, crisp wrapper resembling a spring roll. During Ramadan they are a common feature of family tables. In Bangladesh both flat and pyramid shapes are eaten, and in Nepal the snack is called singada in the east.
In the Middle East and the eastern Mediterranean, the Israeli sambusak reflects Sephardi and Mizrahi traditions, with fillings of chickpea, meat, cheese or spices depending on the community. In East Africa and the Horn, the sambuus is often reserved for special occasions. South Africa calls it samoosa and it belongs to Indian South African and Cape Malay cooking. In Goa and Portugal it is the chamuça, and similar snacks appear in Brazil and several former Portuguese colonies in Africa. Frozen samosas are now sold in supermarkets in the United Kingdom, Canada and the United States, and filo or flour tortilla versions have become common.