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I love empanadas. As I was eating one today, I guessed that "empanada" must mean something like "breaded". A quick web search made me feel inordinately proud of my guess. But I can't yet find a name for the thing that's been breaded. It must be a feminine, of course. "Torta" seems wrong.
Any thoughts? Thanks.
EDIT: This question may be a duplicate of this one. The suggestion there is that "carne" is the implied word.
There is an implied action: empanar. It means, according to DRAE,
empanar.
1. tr. Encerrar algo en masa o pan para cocerlo en el horno.
So there you are. Indeed the implied noun is (drums)... algo, i.e. whatever fits inside the bread. It could be meat. But there's no fixed implied known. But the fact that the bread should be stuffed leads to the participle of empanar, namely empanada.
There is no implied noun, other than possibly the ambiguous "one" or "thing," as in:
Breaded one
or
Breaded thing
The exact same thing happens in English (and probably every other language) when we use an adjective form in the place of a noun to describe something by its primary characteristic.
Some obvious examples from Spanish, and their literal English translations, are:
Some obvious ones in English:
I support the answer by @c.p. but would like to clarify a couple things.
What is an empanada? Naturally, there is regional variation! Here is one possible configuration:
The empanada pictured is similar to what in English can be called a hand pie or half moon pie. (I'd add turnover to this list if turnovers weren't usually triangular shaped.)
It might be sweet or savory (or conceivably a combination, e.g. empanada de queso).
It is often made with wheat flour but other types of starch are also possible, e.g. plantain.
It may be fried or baked.
OP appears to want to know, also (judging by the comment below c.p.'s answers), what to call the theme of the particular empanada, i.e. how to refer to the filling. As @eSedano pointed out in a self-deleted answer, it would be called, at least in Mexico:
relleno
But note that the theme ingredient of the empanada can be either a discrete filling, added during the shaping phase, or it can be incorporated into the short dough during the initial mixing of the dough.
The empanada I am most familiar with (eastern central Mexico) is based on a short pastry or shortcrust pastry. It's no longer based, in this day and age, on bread or pan as we now use these terms. Oxford defines shortcrust pastry as "crumbly pastry made with flour, fat, and a little water, typically used for pies [...] and tarts."
However, there are recipes in which the oil doesn't appear as an initial ingredient, and doesn't get incorporated into the empanada until the deep frying.
It can be very different pie depending on the country.
From Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empanada
An empanada (Spanish pronunciation: [empaˈnaða]; also called pastel in Brazilian Portuguese and pate in Haitian Creole) is a stuffed bread or pastry baked or fried in many countries in Southern Europe, Latin America, the Southwestern United States, and parts of Southeast Asia. The name comes from the Galician, Portuguese, and Spanish verb empanar, meaning to wrap or coat in bread.
Empanadas are made by folding dough or bread around stuffing, which usually consists of a variety of meat, cheese, huitlacoche, vegetables or fruits, among others.
In this case we are in front of a word that can work as a noun and as an adjective.
carne empanada --> Here empanada is an adjective of carne
He hecho empanada, ¿de qué? empanada de carne --> Here empanada is a noun
Usually the genre of the word could confound people. If we use, for example "atún" with empanada we get:
atún empanado --> again working as an adjective, it gets the genre of the noun.
He hecho empanada, ¿de qué? empanada de atún --> Here is a noun, and it's genre stays the same
This is because empanada can be a noun, but empanado not, it's always an adjective.
There is no implied noun.
It is the same as "sandwich" in english:
I am going to buy a tuna sandwich
Me voy a comprar una empanada de jamon y queso
So, if a sandwich is "anything between two slices of bread" an empanada is "anything wrapped in dough and baked or fried"
Wikipedia states that empanadas descend from middle eastern samosas, but the oldest european empanadas, the galician ones, are pies, very much similar to the ones known in the anglo-saxon world
An old word for what there is inside the bread is companaje or compango.
But I've never heard it in the wild, so it is likely that even a native will not understand it.
The word for breaded is empanizado or empanado
Meaning that the verbs empanizar and empanar each mean to bread
Whoever mentioned the translation breaded thing was the most accurate, because that's exactly what it is. The em- preffix suggests that something is inside.
However, Spanish and Latin American culture has two kinds of breads, de harina and de masa.
If the bread you are using to empanar something is masa, then the verb goes from being to bread to to cook/bake inside bread
Rather, to cook inside pastry
But I can't yet find a name for the thing that's been breaded. It must be a feminine, of course.
I can't say that I know exactly what the subject of empanada is, but like you said, it is feminine, so it must either be masa, harina, or fruta that is the "implied subject".
