Amba (condiment)

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Amba" condiment – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (September 2020) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)

Amba or anba (

Mangoes being native to South Asia, the name "amba" seems to have been borrowed, via Arabic, from the Marathi word āmbā (आंबा), which is in turn derived from the Sanskrit word āmra (आम्र, "mango").^[1]

History

According to the legend, amba was developed in the 19th century by members of the Sassoon family of Bombay, India, who were Baghdadi Jews.^[2] Iraqi Jewish immigrants brought it to Israel in the 1950s as an accompaniment to their Shabbat morning meal.^[2]

Variants

Iraqi cuisine

Amba is frequently used in Iraqi cuisine, especially as a spicy sauce to be added to fish dishes, falafel, kubbah, kebabs, and eggs.

Saudi Arabian cuisine

Amba is popular in the western part of the

Amba is also mentioned in literary works, mainly memoirs. In his memoir Baghdad Yesterday Sasson Somekh dedicates a whole chapter to amba.^[4] He uses amba to tell the story of the Iraqi Jewish community that had satellite communities in India and Southeast Asia. In the same chapter Somekh references another Iraqi, who wrote a short story about amba (Abd al-Malik Noori, "It happened on a Friday").

Khalid Qisthini, a columnist at Asharq Al-Awsat, wrote a short article on remembering the foods of Baghdad of the past. His article is titled "Talking about the food of amba and samoon, which characterised Baghdad of the past." He remembers that in his youth, school children would rush out of school to get samoon with amba from the street vendor, who, if generous, would add a little more amba.^{[citation needed]}

Notes