Moussaka is a baked dish from Greek cooking, the one English speakers mean when they say the word in a restaurant. You cut aubergine — that is eggplant; in Taiwan, 茄子 — into slices, cook it, then layer it with minced meat, often lamb or beef, and a thick white sauce with cheese on top, and bake it until the top is gold. It comes to the table in squares, like a pie with no pastry. The usual English picture is meat, cheese, and aubergine, which is right, though actually the “cheese” you taste is often that white sauce with cheese in it, not a separate cheese layer like pizza. The name looks Greek, and the restaurant dish is Greek, but the word did not start in Greek. Greek borrowed it; before that it was Ottoman Turkish, and before that Arabic. The Arabic name is probably from a root meaning to hit or pound or smash — scholars are not all on one exact Arabic form. Sister dishes exist in Turkey and the Arab world, sometimes simpler, not always with that white sauce. In English, though, moussaka almost always means the Greek baked layered kind.

慕沙卡（希臘茄子絞肉焗菜）