By Monish Gujral

There are some foods that are more than recipes. They are travellers.

They cross borders, survive migrations, adapt to new ingredients and, somewhere along the way, become so deeply associated with a country that we forget where their journey began.

The samosa is one such dish .

Today, mention samosa anywhere in the world and the image that comes to mind is unmistakably Indian: a golden, triangular pastry, crisp on the outside and filled with spiced potatoes, peas, ginger, chilli and fragrant Indian spices, served with mint and tamarind chutneys.

But the samosa’s story is much older and much more international.

And for me, the story of the samosa also brings back memories of my own culinary journey at Moti Mahal—a journey that began with the lessons of my grandfather, Kundan Lal Gujral, the pioneer behind the culinary legacy that began in Peshawar in 1920 and was re-established in Delhi after Partition.

A pastry that travelled with people

Long before the samosa became an Indian street-food icon, versions of filled pastries were being prepared across Central Asia and Persia.

Historical references describe preparations known by names such as sambosa, sanbusak and sambusak. These were practical foods—small pastries filled with meat, onions, nuts and spices that could be carried by travellers and eaten on long journeys.

The great trade routes were not merely routes for silk, spices and precious goods.

They were highways of cuisine.

People travelled, and they carried their food with them.

One of the most interesting historical references to an early form of the samosa in India comes from the 14th-century traveller Ibn Battuta, who described a dish called sambusak at the court of Muhammad bin Tughlaq in Delhi.

It was a sophisticated preparation, filled with minced meat, almonds, pistachios, onions and spices.

The samosa had arrived in India—but it was still waiting to become Indian.

India does what India does best

Indian cuisine has always had a remarkable ability to absorb an idea and transform it.

The samosa was no exception.

Over centuries, Indian cooks began adapting the pastry to local tastes and ingredients.

Eventually, the potato—an ingredient that arrived in India centuries after the earliest versions of the samosa—became its most famous filling.

Potatoes were combined with green peas, ginger, green chilli, coriander, cumin, fennel and other spices.

The result was something completely different from the medieval sambusak.

It was the Indian samosa.

And this transformation reminds me of one of the most important lessons I learnt from my grandfather.

A recipe is never just a recipe

Growing up around Moti Mahal, I learnt that Indian cooking cannot be understood simply by memorising ingredients.

My grandfather, Kundan Lal Gujral, was a demanding teacher.

His approach was rooted in observation.

He taught me that the hand of the cook matters as much as the written recipe. The temperature of the tandoor, the texture of the dough, the freshness of the spice, the balance of salt, the timing of cooking—these things cannot always be learnt from a book.

You watch.

You smell.

You touch.

You taste.

And then you understand.

That philosophy stayed with me throughout my own training in Indian cuisine.

At Moti Mahal, food was never treated as an isolated dish. It was part of a larger culinary culture.

My grandfather had already demonstrated this when he transformed the way the world experienced Indian food.

At the original Moti Mahal in Peshawar and later in Delhi, dishes such as tandoori chicken, butter chicken and dal makhani became part of a new vocabulary of Indian restaurant cuisine.

The lesson for me was simple:

Indian cuisine evolves without losing its soul.

The samosa and the Moti Mahal philosophy

The samosa is a perfect example of that philosophy.

Nobody today questions whether the potato samosa is Indian.

It has become part of India’s culinary DNA.

Yet its ancestry tells us a different story.

It travelled through cultures before arriving in India. Indian cooks then took the basic idea and gave it new ingredients, new spices, new techniques and a new identity.

This is exactly how great cuisines evolve.

When I was learning the fundamentals of Indian cooking, I was repeatedly reminded that authenticity does not necessarily mean refusing to change.

Authenticity can mean understanding why something works before deciding how it should evolve.

That distinction has influenced my own approach to food and to Moti Mahal.

The samosa leaves India again

Once the samosa became firmly established in India, its journey was far from over.

Indian migration carried it across the world.

It travelled with families, traders, workers and entrepreneurs to East Africa, the Middle East, Britain, Southeast Asia, North America and beyond.

And everywhere it went, something fascinating happened.

The samosa adapted.

In some places it remained vegetarian and potato-based.

In others, meat fillings became more prominent.

Some versions became smaller and delicate.

Others became larger and more substantial.

Local spices and ingredients entered the filling.

Yet the triangular pastry remained recognisable.

It became a culinary passport.

From Delhi to London

I have often seen this phenomenon through the journey of Moti Mahal itself.

My grandfather’s story began in Peshawar in 1920.

Partition changed everything.

In 1947, he migrated to India and rebuilt Moti Mahal in Delhi.

What could have been simply the story of a restaurant became something much larger: a story of migration, resilience and the movement of culinary knowledge from one generation to another.

The restaurant became a place where people encountered flavours that had travelled across the subcontinent.

And just as Moti Mahal travelled from Peshawar to Delhi and eventually beyond India, the samosa travelled in the opposite direction—from the wider Central Asian and Persian culinary world into India, and then from India back out into the world.

There is a beautiful symmetry in that.

Food travels because people travel.

What makes a samosa truly Indian?

Is it the potato?

The triangular shape?

The spices?

The pastry?

Perhaps it is none of these individually.

It is the way they come together.

A good Indian samosa has a particular personality.

The pastry must be crisp but not greasy.

The filling must be generously spiced but balanced.

The potato should retain some texture rather than becoming a paste.

The spices should announce themselves gradually.

And then comes the chutney.

Mint.

Tamarind.

Sometimes both.

The contrast between the hot, crisp samosa and the sweet-sour tamarind chutney is almost theatrical.

It is a small dish, but it contains the philosophy of Indian food: texture, aroma, spice, balance and contrast.

What my grandfather taught me about food

One of the greatest privileges of my life has been learning from a culinary tradition that was passed down to me through my family.

My grandfather did not leave me merely recipes.

He left me a way of thinking about food.

He taught me to respect ingredients.

To understand technique.

To maintain consistency.

But most importantly, to understand that food is connected to people and history.

That lesson has stayed with me as I have travelled, written about food, worked with chefs and expanded the Moti Mahal legacy across generations.

Whenever I look at a humble dish such as the samosa, I see that same principle.

A dish may begin in one place.

It may travel to another.

It may change.

It may acquire a new name.

It may even become so closely identified with its new home that its earlier history is forgotten.

But that does not diminish its story.

It enriches it.

The samosa: a global Indian icon

Today, the samosa can be found in Delhi and Mumbai, Dubai and Doha, London and New York, Nairobi and Singapore.

It appears at roadside tea stalls and in luxury hotels.

It is served at weddings, office meetings, family gatherings and diplomatic receptions.

It has become street food, comfort food and, increasingly, contemporary restaurant food.

That is an extraordinary journey for a small pastry.

But perhaps the samosa’s greatest achievement is not that it travelled around the world.

It is that it managed to belong everywhere without losing its identity.

That is what great food does.

And that is what I learnt from my grandfather and from the Moti Mahal kitchen: culinary heritage is not a museum piece.

It lives.

It travels.

It adapts.

And when it is passed from one generation to another, it acquires new stories without losing the old ones.

The samosa is one of those stories.

Its journey began centuries ago along the great routes of Asia.

India gave it a new character.

Indian communities carried it across oceans.

And today the world recognises it as one of the great ambassadors of Indian food.

So the next time you pick up a hot samosa, remember that you are not merely eating a snack.

You are holding centuries of migration, trade, culinary exchange and Indian ingenuity in the palm of your hand.

And perhaps that is the most delicious history lesson of all.

— Monish Gujral
Chairman, Moti Mahal Group | Restaurateur, Chef & Food Writer