Not just your local pastry, the term “curry puff” is often associated with the heritage brand, Old Chang Kee. This pastry has also been guilty of inspiring one too many hairdos in the 1960s. The Old Chang Kee brand is known to be Singapore’s leading brand of curry puffs complete with their signature Curry’O.

The curry puff is a pastry pouch filled with curried potatoes (or beef/sardines) and deep-fried till golden brown. There are many versions of the curry puff – for instance, the Malay version, known as epok-epok, is small and usually filled with curried potato, or canned sardines. The Chinese version, like Old Chang Kee’s, is larger and usually contains potato and chicken curry, sometimes with a small piece of boiled egg stuffed within as well.

Some say the curry puff was inspired by English Cornish Pasty since the 1800s, an oven-cooked pastry case traditionally filled with diced meat, potatoes and onion. It has a semi-circular shape, caused by folding the pastry sheet over the filling. The pasty is then sealed with a crimp on the curved edge – rather similar to our curry puffs we know today. There are also others who say that the curry puff was inspired by Indian samosas, which are triangular pastries filled with curried potatoes and deep fried till crisp. These samosas were made by the Indians for their colonial masters back in the days of the British Empire and brought over to Singapore where Malays took on the idea of a pastry filled with curry. Thus, the epok-epok (since the 1930s) was said to be a Malaysian, Singaporean, Indonesian and Thai snack invented by the Malays.

Singaporeans have ranked their top favourite brands of curry puffs, often originating from shops more than 60 years ago. While many have raved about the crispy crust and savoury filling in Tip Top Curry Puffs sold in Ang Mo Kio, others flocked to 1A Crispy Puffs’ seashell-like crusts which has fillings which ranged from spicy black pepper chicken to creamy durian.

To truly infuse the Singaporean flavour into the ubiquitous curry puff, the correct Singlish pronunciation of curry puff will be intimately termed “kali pok”.