empanada

Spanish empanar means to bread, to coat in breadcrumbs or pastry — from en- (in) and pan (bread). The past participle empanada literally means 'breaded' or 'enclosed in bread.' The concept is ancient: a portable meal of filling wrapped in pastry that seals in flavor and makes the food travel well. Empanadas are the original fast food.

The empanada tradition has Galician roots — the Galicia region of northwestern Spain has a strong empanada culture, making large flat pies filled with tuna, meat, or vegetables. The individual hand pie version spread with Spanish colonization throughout Latin America in the 16th century. Each region adapted the filling: Argentina uses beef; Colombia uses chicken; Chile uses olives and hard-boiled eggs; Venezuela uses cheese.

The Cornish pasty of England, the calzone of Italy, the samosa of India, the pierogi of Poland — all are structural relatives: filling enclosed in pastry, portable, self-contained. None are etymologically related to empanada, but they solved the same problem: how to carry a meal in your hand without losing the filling.

In Spain, empanadas can be enormous — a meter across, cut into squares, served at festivals. In Latin America, they are individual-sized, crimped around the edge with a pattern that traditionally identified the filling — so the illiterate could know what was inside. The decorative edge was once a labeling system.