Of the five senses, smell is the one with the best memory.
There are some mornings when you wake up and you can almost smell a food you ate years ago. The food is not there in front of you, but as if, you can taste the memory of it. Last week of 2025, that is exactly what happened to me. I woke up thinking about two things I used to love as snacks – chicken patties and egg puffs. Once that thought came, the memories followed automatically.
Calcutta (then) evenings from childhood.
Bangalore (then) mornings from my first job days.
Two phases of life, both attached to a simple bakery snack.
I knew I had to try making them at home. My cooking skills are limited, so I leaned on a couple of YouTube recipes. But let me sit with the memories for a moment, before we start making the kitchen messy.
CORE MEMORY 1 – Chicken Puff in Calcutta
Growing up in Kolkata, or rather Calcutta back then, there were a few bakery names that felt like part of the city. Kathleen and Monginis were the big ones, and you would find them in most localities. Sugar & Spice existed too, but it was more spread out.
It was not something we bought every day. It was more of a treat. Sometimes I would get to go to Monginis or Kathleen, walk in through the glass doors, and look at the savouries kept in stacks behind the counter. That feeling is still very clear in my head.
Now I am in a different phase of life. I can only describe those memories to my kid, and then try to recreate the food so both of us can enjoy it together. That is why we decided to make it at home.
Chicken Puff/Patties Recipe
Make a roux with butter and flour, add milk to form a béchamel, then season with salt, nutmeg, garlic powder, chilli flakes, pepper, cheese, green onion, and cilantro. Mix in shredded boiled chicken and chill until the filling firms up. Roll out puff pastry and cut into equal squares or rectangles. Place a spoon of filling on one half, leaving a clean border. Fold over to form a pocket, press to seal, and crimp the edges with a fork. Brush the top with egg wash, slit lightly if you want, and bake until golden and puffed.
Watch the full recipe here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6Cn6_dfENM
I used the traditional patties shape instead of the muffin style shown in the video.
CORE MEMORY 2 – EGG Puff in BANGALORE
Move forward from 90s Calcutta kid to 2000s college pass-out in his first job in Bangalore. In that phase, egg puff and juice was an everyday thing. Sometimes breakfast, sometimes an evening snack, sometimes just food when you did not want to think too much.
Bangalore had bakeries everywhere. You could find bread, puffs, and a juice counter in almost every area. Egg puff is still one of the first things I think about when I think of Bangalore, even now.
It sounds trivial on paper. A puff pastry with an egg inside. But anyone who has lived away from home, chasing education or career, knows how tightly these simple snacks get attached to memory. They become markers of a life you were building from scratch.
EGG Puff/Patties Recipe
Egg Puffs feature flaky puff pastry stuffed with a spicy, jammy onion masala and half a boiled egg, then baked till golden. Thinly sliced red onions are slowly caramelized in coconut and regular oil, then cooked with ginger, green chillies, curry leaves, cumin, fennel, garam masala, Kashmiri chilli powder, salt, pepper, ketchup, and coriander. This cooled masala is spread on thawed 4×4 inch puff pastry squares, topped with half an egg, more masala, sealed with egg wash, then brushed again and baked at 350°F for about 30 minutes.
Watch the full recipe here: https://youtu.be/RmTIO3ywouI
Memories of Metros
So, for me, the puffs were never really about the recipe.
The chicken puff is part of my Kolkata story. The egg puff is part of my Bangalore story. Two phases of my life that come back instantly with one bite. But making them at home added a third story, and that one belongs to my growing-up kid.
When I was his age, these snacks felt like rare treats or everyday comforts, depending on the city and the phase. Now I am the one standing in the kitchen, trying to recreate what I once stood outside a bakery counter dreaming about. And he is right there with me, watching, asking questions, waiting for the first batch to come out, and of course judging whether the filling is “good enough.”
That is what I am going to remember most. I will remember that he was part of it. That he saw where these stories came from. That he got to taste a small piece of my childhood and my early adult life, but in his own way, in our own home.
Maybe years from now he will not remember the exact recipe either. But he might remember that we made puffs together, and that I kept telling him why Kolkata and Bangalore still show up in my food cravings. If that becomes his small core memory, then this whole experiment was worth it.
Honumans 