Sambosa calories: cheese, vegetable and home-made, per 100 g

Sambosa is a pastry folded around a savoury filling, usually into a triangle, and a familiar part of iftar in Ramadan. Samosa is another spelling of the same name, and the tables themselves use both; here both mean the same food.

The Food Composition Tables for the Kingdom of Bahrain hold three sets of sambosa figures. A fast-food study and a ready-to-eat study each bought cheese and vegetable sambosa in Bahrain, every figure the analysis of three pooled samples, and the composite-dishes section analysed one prepared in a Bahraini home, printing neither its recipe nor its filling. The fast-food study lists cheese, wheat flour and oil for the cheese sambosa; potatoes, onions, peas, wheat flour and oil for the vegetable one.

The two fast-food rows reappear in section 1 of the tables under the spelling samosa. Each repeat duplicates an analysis already shown, so it is not listed again.

Carbohydrate barely moves: all five rows sit between 32.1 g and 35.2 g per 100 g, and it is the largest macronutrient by weight in each. Fat separates the fillings, at 27 g and 23.9 g in the cheese rows against 12.1 g and 13.6 g in the vegetable rows. Since each gram of fat carries over twice the energy a gram of carbohydrate does, fat supplies more of the energy than carbohydrate in both cheese rows, while carbohydrate still leads in the vegetable and home-made rows.

Protein is the other gap: in each study the cheese sambosa carried more than twice the protein of the vegetable one, 13.1 g against 5.8 g as fast food and 11.6 g against 5.1 g ready to eat. Together, fat and protein make up almost all of the energy difference between the fillings.

Neither study of bought sambosa reads higher every time. Cheese sambosa measured 429 kcal per 100 g as fast food against 402 kcal ready to eat, while vegetable sambosa went the other way, 275 against 260 kcal. An average would be a figure no laboratory measured, so each row stays as published.

The home-made row measured the least energy and fat of the five, but it describes one recipe from one home, not home cooking in general. With its filling unrecorded, it is not lined up with the cheese or vegetable rows, and this page does not guess what was inside.

The fast-food study names oil among the ingredients, but the tables never record whether a sample was fried or baked. So there is no fried, oven or air-fryer figure here and no adjustment between them: cooking method can change how much fat a pastry holds, but for sambosa that was not measured. Also not covered:

• Meat sambosa. No row is labelled meat, and the home-made row, its filling unrecorded, cannot stand in for one.
• A samosa from a South Asian restaurant, which may be made quite differently; no row is labelled by cuisine.
• Today's sambosa from a shop or a frozen pack. The tables came out in 2011.

The food calories page lists foods still waiting for a usable analysis, with reasons; its grills, sandwiches and snacks table holds the analysed ones.

Searches ask about samosa calories per piece, and about small, medium and large ones. No source here gives a piece weight or defines those sizes, so a kitchen scale has to.

1. Zero a plate on the scale, add your sambosa and note the grams; divide by the count for one piece.
2. Search for Sambosa in the food calorie calculator and pick a row: cheese or vegetable from either study for a bought sambosa, or the home-made row.
3. Enter the grams. Unsure which study fits? Run both rows for your filling and keep the range.
4. Add any dip as its own food; anything without a row stays out of the total rather than being guessed.

For a whole day, the calorie calculator sets an estimated target and the macro calculator turns it into daily fat, carbohydrate and protein to measure the plate against.

At iftar, sambosa may share the table with dates and luqaimat, both in the same tables. Per 100 g, both cheese rows measured more energy than dried dates (tamr) and the other three rows less; all five measured more than fresh dates (rutab). Beside luqaimat, the cheese rows were well above and the rest level or below, and every sambosa row carried more protein than luqaimat or either kind of date.

The Ramadan meal plan gives iftar its own share of the day's calories and protein; the Ramadan fitness guide covers training, eating and hydration around the fast.

Nothing here is dietetic advice: the rows describe analysed food, not what any one person should eat. With a medical condition or a clinician's diet plan, let your doctor or a registered dietitian decide where sambosa fits.