The 2023 Ealdormere Cooks Calendar had a theme of pies, which I decided to interpret as hand pies: in this case, samosas. The research for a recipe led me down delightful rabbit holes in various medieval cookbooks as I searched for a recipe to recreate. My redacted recipe is at the very bottom, but please enjoy scrolling through all the samosa recipes I found from the 13th to 16th C, and from Egypt to India.
Kitab Al-Tabikh by Muhammad b. al-Hasan b. Muhammad b. al-Karim, the Scribe of Baghdad, is a 13th C recipe book from Baghdad that has samosa recipes. I have three different editions, and the recipes in each are sufficiently different and the ordering of the recipes is such that I am not 100% certain whether it is the same recipe.
The first is the 1939 translation by A.J. Arberry, reproduced in Medieval Arab Cookery (p. 72).
Maqluba (literally, turned). Take and slice red meat, then chop with a large knife. put into the mortar, and pound as small as possible. Take fresh sumach, boil in water, wring out and strain. Into this place the minced meat, and boil until cooked, so that it has absorbed all the sumach-water, though covered to twice its depth: then remove from the saucepan, and spray with a little lemon-juice. Lay out to dry. Then sprinkle with fine-ground seasonings, dry coriander, cumin, pepper and cinnamon, and rub over it a few sprigs of dry mint. Take walnuts, grind coarse, and add: break eggs and throw in, mixing well. Make into cakes, and fry in fresh sesame-oil, in a fine iron or copper frying-pan. When one side is cooked, turn over on to the other side: then remove.
Sanbusaj. Take meat as described in the preceding recipe (ie for Maqluba). Make thin bread and cut up, then stuff with the aforesaid meat after cutting it into strips: make them triangular, and fasten down with a little dough. Pit into sesame-oil: then remove. The variety called mukallal (literally “crowned”) is stuffed, instead of with meat, with sugar and almonds ground fine and made into a dough with rose-water, or with a sweet called Sabuniya (a mix of sugar syrup, honey, ground almonds and sesame oil that is cooked until thick and allowed to set in thin sheets), and then fried in sesame-oil. Some take it out of the sesame-oil and put it into syrup, remove from the syrup, and leave it in fine-ground scented sugar, with musk and camphor if desired.
The second is from A Baghdad Cookery Book translated by Charles Perry, on page 78:
Sanbusaj. As for Sanbusaj, it is that you take the meat described in the making of maqluba and cut up the thin bread used for that and stuff it with the mentioned meat, after cutting it into strips. Make it triangular (i.e. fold it around the filling to make triangular samosas), then stick it together with a bit of dough and fry it in sesame oil, then take it up. As for that which is called al-mulkallal (crowned, viz. glazed), it is that you stuff it with sugar and finely ground almonds kneaded with rose-water, or with halwa sabuniyya, instead of meat, and fry it in sesame oil. Some people take it out of the sesame oil (and) put it in syrup, then they take it up from it and leave it in finely pounded sugar, spiced with musk and camphor, for him who wants it.
Perry notes that sanbusaj is presumably from Middle Persian sambosag, from se “three” (referring to the triangular shape) and ambos “bread with seeds in it”. Further, the “bread” is a sheet of raw dough. Conceivably, sanbusaj might have been made with pieces of baked flatbread, glued together with raw dough as described, but other medieval descriptions of it (including the quote from Minhaj which appears in the margin), not to mention samosa-making in the modern world, are more consistent with raw dough.
Maqluba. Take lean meat and cut it into strips, then pound it with the cleaver, then transfer it to the mortar and pound it as fine as possible. Take fresh sumac (berries), boil them in water, then strain after macerating it well. Put in the pounded meat and boil it until it is done and has absorbed all the sumac water, the water covering it twice (I.e. by twice its depth). Then take it up from the pot, sprinkle lemon juice on it and spread it out to dry. Then sprinkle it with some of the finely pounded spices – dry coriander, cumin, pepper and cinnamon – and [crumble into it] bunches of dry mint. Take walnuts, pound them coarsely and add to it. Take eggs, break them, throw them on it and mix them well with it. Then fry as cakes with fresh sesame oil in a thin iron or copper pan. When (one) surface of them is done, then turn over the other surface. When it is done, take it up. For the purposes of samosas, I assume that the step of frying as flat cakes is not necessary.
The third version is from Annals of the Caliphs’ Kitchens by Nawal Nasrallah (p. 190), which has a recipe and two poems (that are not part of the original text, but are from about the same time period).
[For the filling,] take meat from the shoulders, the inner thigh, rump, and sheep’s tail fat. Remove the blood vessels and finely pound the meat on a wooden board, using a knife. Add the white part of fresh onion, leek leaves, cilantro, rue, and a little cultivated mint. Pound all the ingredients together quite well. Pour as much as needed of Nabatean murri. Add coriander seeds, black pepper, cassia, cloves, as much as you like of aromatic spices (a mix of spices such as cinnamon, cassia, black pepper, cardamom, ginger, caraway, and galangal) and ginger. Mix the meat with the spices, add some olive oil, and cook it until it is done (in other recipes, there are more details on how to cook the filling: the meat mixture is browned in oil first then water is added. Cooking is resumed until meat is done and all moisture evaporates). Prepared this way, the meat [filling] is called isfidhbaj (white and plain).
Making sanbusaj:
If you like it to be sour, add to the meat mixture as much as you like of pulverized masl (dried yogurt whey). You may use rakhbin (dried buttermilk), sumac juice or any other sour ingredients, as you wish God willing. When the meat mixture is ready, use it to stuff ruqaq (thin sheets of bread) then roll the pieces into triangles, squares, or rectangles (according to the Istanbul manuscript, the pieces are sealed with starch dissolved in some water).
If wished, you may add dried fruits or nuts to the meat stuffing such as walnut, almond, coconut, pistachio, hazelnut, pine nut, or any other fruits. You can also decorate them with eggs the way some people do in banquets (walayim) and public feasts (simatat).
Alternatively, you may shape them Babaki style (named after the Persian king Ardashir Babak, who was famous for his crown shaped like a sin with its radiating rays). Take fermented dough and roll it out very thin. Cut out rounds using a concave wooden mold, similar to a huqq (small bowl). Stuff these rounds with the meat mixture, and seal them by pressing all around the edges with the fingernail.
Fry the pastries in zayt maghsul (washed olive oil) or sesame oil (shayraz). Take them out when they brown (ihmarra) and eat them with whatever you prefer of sauces made with vinegar or mustard. This is the way to make all kinds of sanbusaj excluding the sweet varieties.
Nasrallah also has a recipe for shrimp-filled samosas (p. 237), and another with the same name but is actually more like a filled dumpling (manti or pierogi type, cooked in a broth (p. 280).
Sanbusaj (filled pastries) of shrimp. Clean and boil the shrimp. Pound them with a knife along with boiled taro root if in season and you wish to use it. Sprinkle on the shrimp a small amount of the white part of fresh onion and the juice extracted from sliced onion. Sprinkle, as well, [ground] dry spices and aromatic spices and herbs. Add murri (liquid fermented sauce). If you like it tart, add sumac juice. Wrap mixture in thin pieces of bread and make them into sanbusaj. fry them in sweet oil and serve them. They are scrumptious.
Kitab Wasf Al-At’ima al-Mu’tada (The Description of Familiar Foods) builds on Kitab al-tabikh, but has many additional recipes. It was completed in 1372. It has three sanbusaj recipes. I worked with the translation by Charles Perry, found in Medieval Arab Cookery:
Recipe of Sanbusaq (samosa), p 382. Take all lean meat, without fat, and remove the tendons, and boil it lightly. Then pound it in the mortar and dry it in the air. You mince (or strip) four bunches of parsley, and you mince (or strip) a bunch of green mint for it. You pound the weight of half an ounce of pepper, half an ounce of caraway, three sticks of Ceylon cinnamon, a race of ginger (a piece of fresh ginger, but the size is unclear) and the weight of a mithqal of atraf tib of cardamom and cloves. Then you put that pounded meat in the pot and you put the minced parsley [sc and mint] on it, and you put half the spices on it, and you fry it. You put the quantity o [the juice of] 12 lemons on it and you leave it until it thirsts and dries out. Then put it in the bowl [zubdiyya] and throw half the spices on it and mix it well. You take kunafa (a fine pancake, not the vermicelli-like modern product of the same name) and roll it up and stuff it with it and seal it with dough and fry them in the tajine until they float. It comes out good.
Recipe of Sanbusak Hamid [sour samosa], p 386. Take whatever of good lean meat you wish, and boil it, then tear it up and take it away. Then take the vegetable ingredients, which are parsley, its stalks minced; and onion, its heart taken and minced with it (the coarser parts – stalks, heart – are being minced with the green, leafy parts); and mint. Then take blanched almonds and split them in two. Toast hazelnuts and pound them coarsely. Then combine the meat and the ingredients, after pounding the parsley lightly. Then colour everything with saffron. Then throw in the spices which will be mentioned (though not specified in this recipe). Then boil on the fire a little vinegar in which there is a little green lemon [juice]; the lemon is only used on the meat and the ingredients before they go down to the fire. And when the vinegar has heated on the fire, throw the ingredients in it, then stir until you know that the ingredients have taken consistency. Throw the spices in it, then take it away and cool it. Take care that there not be [too] much vinegar in it. And when it is finished off, take thin flatbread or kunafa and cut it up as usual, then stuff it. Have a little flour that you have kneaded fine to cloak the end of the filling with, so that it does not run out in the tajine. And when you have used up the filling, take the cauldron [dist], pour a sufficience of sesame oil into it and fry the sanbusak in it, then take up. This is the bland version of it, God the Most High willing.
Recipe of Al-Sanbusak Al Hulw [sweet samosa], p. 386-7. It is on the pattern of what we have mentioned of the recipe for the first sanbusaq except there is no vinegar or lemon juice in it. If you want, sweeten it with sugar. You made that. So understand that (something is missing in the original texts). Take peeled almonds, then you pound them with a little pistachio, then you put them through a wheat sieve. Then you take for them their weight in sugar and pound it fine. Then add it to them, then throw a little bit of spice on them for the consistency. Then you enrich it well with sesame oil. Then you join its parts and dry it, and after that you toast it in a cauldron on the fire. You will have coloured it with sufficient saffron. When it is through toasting, throw on enough bees’ honey to unit its sides. Then throw on musk, rose-water, camphor and a little crushed sugar. Then cut up thin flatbread or kunafa and stuff with this stuffing. Then fry them and take up.
Another 13th C Syrian Cookbook, Kitab al Wuslah ila l-Habib fi Waf al-Tayyibat wal Tib (Scents and Flavors, edited and translated by Charles Perry), has four samosa recipes:
First Recipe (6.2) – Take leg and loin meat, pound on a chopping block with a cleaver, and boil until done. Strain off the water and pound in a mortar until soft. Put in a brass pan and add melted tail fat along with coriander seeds, Chinese cinnamon, mastic, and pepper, and cook on the fire until it contracts. Then add two parts minced parsley, one part mint, and one-half part rue, and bring to the boil. Add lemon juice and vinegar and boil until they reduce, then stuff in sanbusak wrappers in the usual way. This is the best kind.
Second Recipe (6.3) – Add sumac, walnuts, and pistachios to the filling.
Third Recipe (6.4) Stuff sanbusak wrappers with pieces of sweetmeat instead of meat, and fry. These make for a nice garnish.
Fourth Recipe (6.4) – Color bread crumbs with saffron and add pounded sugar, honey, and sesame oil, following the recipe for asyutiyyah pudding. When done, add poppy seeds and pistachios and stuff into the sanbusak too.
A Treasure Trove of Variety and Benefits at the Table, a 14th C Egyptian Cookbook translated by Nawal Nasrallah has also four samosa recipes:
115 Recipe for sweet sanbusak (filled pastries). You need sugar qatr (sugar cane molasses) or bee honey, rosewater, hazelnuts, sesame oil, and crepes (ruqaq al kunafa). Pound the sugar. Toast the hazelnuts, grind them coarsely, and knead them into paste with molasses, ground sugar, and rosewater. Alternatively, you may use bee honey [instead of molasses] to knead it. Cut the kunafa sheets (waraq) into strips 4-fingers wide. Put a small amount of the stuffing on each of the pieces, as much as you see suitable, and roll them with the stuffing, all the way down. Seal them with a small amount of [thin] dough, and fry them in sesame oil. Arrange them on plates, sprinkle them with pounded sugar, toasted hazelnuts, and rosewater, and serve.
116 Recipe for sour sanbusak (meat-filled pastries). You need some herbs (such as mint, parsley and cilantro), sesame oil, vinegar, black pepper, hazelnuts or almonds, and kunafa (crepes). Finely pound all the meat you are using, shape it into a single disc as large as a [round of flat] bread or a bit smaller, depending on how much meat you are using. Boil it in a frying pan (tajin) and then flip it, and skim the froth. Keep it until it cooks, and then take it out of the pan and pound the meat one more time, remove all the blood vessels. Suspend the frying pan on the fire, and fry the pounded meat in it once again with sesame oil until it browns. Pour the vinegar on it, and finely chop the herbs onto it and continue folding them in until they wilt. Scald and skin the almonds and grind the coarsely. [If using hazelnuts,] toast them and pound them similarly, and add them to the meat. Pound the black pepper and throw it into the pot. Continue cooking until all the vinegar evaporates.
Cut the kunafa sheets into strips 4-fingers wide. Remove the meat mix from the fire, and after it has cooled down, put as much of it as is needed on each thin sheet of dough, and roll it all the way down. Seal the pieces with a bit of [thin] dough and fry them in sesame oil. Snip off the tips of some green herbs, spread them on the vessels, and arrange the pastries over them. Sprinkle them with a small amount of jasmine [water] or something else.
126 Recipe for sanbusak (filled pastries) (accidentally attached to another recipe but not given its own number). Put some pounded meat in a pot and let it sweat along with a piece of Ceylon cinnamon, a bit of mastic gum, and onions sliced but left intact. When the meat is done sweating [ie., all juices released have evaporated], fry it in sesame oil to remove all undesirable greasy odors. Add sumac juice to the meat; put enough in to sour it. Let it cook until all the liquids evaporate. Add some chopped lemon preserved in salt, mint, and aromatic spices (such as cinnamon, cardamom, and nutmeg). [Fill and fold as in recipe 116 above], and fry them in fresh sesame oil, but before doing so, smear the pieces with saffron dissolved in rosewater. This is the recipe I redacted for the cooks’ calendar. My version can be found below.
127 Recipe for making sanbusak filling. Take 1/2 ratl (1/2 pound) meat and boil it as described earlier [above recipe]. Pound it again and let it dry out in the open air. [Also take] 4 bunches of Macedonian parsley and one bunch of fresh mint, both chopped finely; 1/2 uqiyya (15 grams/1 tablespoon) black pepper; 1/2 uqiyya caraway seeds; 3 sticks of Ceylon cinnamon; a couple of nodes from a ginger rhizome, 2 dirhams (6 grams/1 teaspoon) each of spice blend, cardamom, cloves, spikenard, and betel leaves.
The Sultan’s Feast, a Fifteenth Century Egyptian Cookbook by Ibn Mubarak Shah (edited, translated and introduced by Daniel L. Newman), offers several recipes.
81. samosas (sanbusak). It requires thin sheets of kunafa (a paper-thin pancake made on a special polished griddle, very similar to a modern Lavash flatbread) and sweetmeat, as well as coarsely pounded hazelnuts. Toast the sugar and the hazelnuts. Knead with sugar dissolved in water (likely boiled until it has gained a consistency so that it can be used instead of honey) or honey. Cut the sheets, stuff them and seal with a bit of dough. You must sprinkle some rose water on the sugar. Fry in sesame oil, and after arranging them on plates, sprinkle with sugar, hazelnuts and rose water.
82. Sour Samosas (sanbusak hamid). As for the sour variety, this requires herbs, sesame oil, vinegar, pepper, hazelnuts or almonds, and kanafa sheets. Finely pound all the meat together and shape like a disc to suit the size of a flatbread (between half and inch and an inch in thickness), or smaller, depending on the quantity of the meat. Then, boil and turn over in the pan. Skim the froth until it is cooked. Take out and pound finely. Remove the veins of the meat and hang the pot to cool down. Add sesame oil and fry the pounded meat in it until it is browned. Pour the vinegar into the pan and chop the vegetables in it, turning them over until they wilt. Blanch the almonds and pound coarsely. Add them to the pot. Pound the pepper and add it. Keep the pot on the boil until all the vinegar has dried out. Cut up the kanafa sheets to a width of four fingers and remove the seasonings from the fire. Let it cool down. Take the required amount of filling, put it in a sheet and fold. Then, seal with a bit of dough. Fry in sesame oil. Cut up the fresh herbs, put them on platters and add the samosas to it. Sprinkle a bit of jasmine, or something else, on top and serve.
87. Recipe for samosas (sanbusak). Take pounded meat and fry in a pot. Then sweat it, together with a piece of cinnamon, a bit of mastic, and a sliced onion. When the meat has released its juices, fry it in sesame oil in order to remove any other impurities. Then throw on the juice of toasted sumac (berries). Let it cook until the water has evaporated. Cut in some lemon and mint. Leave the aromatic spices in. Fry with fresh sesame oil. Before frying dye with saffron dissolved in rose water.
267. Pound the meat very finely and boil it. Don’t leave it alone so that it does not coagulate into a lump. When the meat has been tenderized and dried, it is fried until no liquid remains[in the pan]. Chop up the vegetables parsley, fresh coriander and mint, and pound (dried) coriander, caraway seeds and hot spices. Mix the meat with the vegetables. Pound walnuts and almonds and mix them in, or sprinkle on a little lemon [juice], so that the pounded spices do not overcook. Add a little sumac for the same reason, fry in sesame oil or sheep’s tail fat.
290. A kind of sanbusak. Take thigh and loin meat and pound it with a cleaver on a wooden board. Boil until it is done and then drain off the water. Pound in a mortar until it is smooth, and then put it in a brass pot and add sheep’s tail fat on it, together with dried coriander, cassia, mastic, pepper and roast. Add one part chopped up parsley, one part of mint, and half apart of rue. Boil everything. Then add tart. I égard to it and boil until it becomes white vinegar. Then, add lemon juice to it and boil several times. Afterwards fill the sanbusak sheets. This is the best way to make them,
291. Another kind. Add sumac, shelled pistachios and walnuts to the [sanbusak] filling.
292. Another kind. Take breadcrumbs and dye them with saffron. Sift through a sieve and add pounded sugar, bee honey and sesame oil. Then, proceed as you would with an Asutiyya (a type of bread pudding, consisting of baked flatbreads filled with nuts, honey, etc.). When it is done, add black poppy seeds and pistachio kernels, and use this to stuff the sanbusak with.
More recipes can be found in the Nimatnama Manuscript of the Sultans of Mandu. (translated by. Norah M. Titley, Routlege: 2005, p. 119), an Indian book of recipes dated 1495-1505.
Another recipe, for the method for samosas: take finely minced venison and flavour some ghee with asafoetida and fenugreek. Mix the minced meat with saffron and put it in the ghee. Then bake asafoetida, salt, cumin, and fenugreek. Put cardamoms, cloves, coriander one ratti of camphor and one ratti of musk into the mince and cook it well, and a half quantity of finely minced onions and a quarter of minced died ginger into the meat. When it has become well-cooked, sprinkle it with rose water and take it off and stuff the samosas. Make a hole in the samosas with a stick and fry them in sweet-smelling ghee until they are tender. By the same recipe, samosas can be made from any kind of meat that is desired.
Another recipe for meat after that manner: take very finely ground mince and mix saffron or turmeric together with cardamoms, cloves, coriander, pepper, salt, lime juice, camphor, musk, onions and fresh ginger. Heat some ghee and flavour it with asafoetida and put the mince with it. Make it tasty with ambergris and rose water and take it off. Having made flour dough, make two loaves and put the mince between them. Cook the loaf, making it firm and well-cooked and then remove it. Put camphor, musk and rosewater into sweet-smelling ghee and, having made the loaves in the above-mentioned way, put the ghee on them.
1/8 tsp ground mastic
Sanbusak (filled pastries) from recipe 116 in Treasure Trove of Benefits and Variety at the Table
- 1 pound ground lamb
- 1 piece cinnamon bark
- Raw sesame oil (not toasted)
- 3 tsp dried sumac reconstituted in about 1/4 c water
- 1 medium onion, cut in half and thinly sliced
- 1 preserved lemon, chopped finely and with the seeds removed
- Sprig of mint, chopped (about 2 Tbsp fresh), or 1 tsp dried
- 1 tsp cinnamon
- 1/2 tsp cardamom, ground
- 1/4 tsp nutmeg
- 1/8 tsp saffron dissolved in 1 Tbsp rosewater
- 3 c all-purpose flour
- 1 c water
- 1/2 tsp dough
Heat 1 Tbsp sesame oil in a pan, then add the onion and lamb, cinnamon bark, and mastic, and fry until the meat is mostly cooked and the onions are soft. Add the sumac and water, and continue cooking until the liquid has evaporated. Add the preserved lemon (it can be salty so you may wish to use less), mint and the remaining spices. Remove the cinnamon bark piece and adjust the spices to taste. The recipe is quite flexible and some versions add ground walnuts, almonds, pine nuts, pistachios, hazelnuts, cumin, coriander, ginger, fenugreek, asafoetida, lime juice, musk, camphor, pepper, cilantro, rue, leek leaves, coconut, eggs, parsley, caraway seeds, and pepper (obviously not all at once).
Form into a cone flat bread (see instructions below). Fill the cone with meat, then seal the top shut with more soft dough. Alternatively prepare a stiff dough (see instructions below) and roll it out but do not bake. Cut into 4 inch wide squares, form cones and pinch the join to seal. Add meat and pinch the top to seal.
Soak the saffron in rosewater, then brush on the samosas. Fry in sesame oil until the samosas are lightly browned and crisp.
Recipe makes about 12-15 samosas.
Samosa (Sanbusak) pastry
For the casing, you have two options. The first is closest to the version that appears most frequently in
period samosa recipes, but it is fussy. The instructions are not 100% clear, but Charles Perry suggests a
flatbread, like modern lavash (an Iranian/Armenian flatbread). He notes that some medieval recipes use raw
dough, as do modern samosas.
For lavash:
3 c all-purpose flour
1 c water
½ tsp salt
Knead together 2 cups flour, ½ – 1/3 cup water and ¼ tsp salt into a stiff dough, then allow it to sit
for 30 minutes. Roll it out into a long oval as thinly as possible and bake for 2-3 minutes on a pizza stone or upside-down cookie sheet that has been preheated in a 500°F oven. Cut the bread into strips or squares about 4 inches wide (a palm width), form into a cone and seal with some softer dough. Fill the cone with meat, then seal the top shut with more soft dough.
For modern samosas:
Knead together the flour, water and salt into a stiff dough. Roll the dough out, as above, but do not bake. Cut into 4-inch squares, form cones and pinch the join to seal. Add meat and pinch the top to seal.
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