There is a well known story of a time much closer to the present in which 'senbei' is derived from an incident in which an old woman named 'Osen', who was running a dumpling shop in Soka-juku (present Soka City), the second relay station from Nihonbashi, Edo on the Nikko-kaido Road, started to make and sell a different form of dumpling taking advice she received one day from a samurai who told her, 'How about making those dumplings flat and grilling them?'
もっと現在に近いものでは、日光街道の2番目の宿場町だった草加宿（現在の草加市）で団子屋を営んでいた「おせん」という老婆が、ある日、侍に「団子を平らにして焼いたらどうか」と言われて始めたのが名前の由来、というよく知られた挿話がある。