Cornish Pasty

Appearance & taste

The Cornish Pasty has a D shape. Its edge is pressed together and crimped and lies on the side, not on top of the pasty. A glaze of milk, egg or both gives it a golden colour. The pastry is sturdy enough that the pasty does not break during baking, cooling and handling.

The meat and vegetables remain individually recognisable in appearance, taste and texture; according to the specification, during baking the flavours combine into a harmonious overall taste, and the pastry slightly takes on the flavour of the filling. The pasty comes in many sizes and is sold at bakers and butchers, in supermarkets, in delicatessens and in catering.

Production

Depending on the baker’s recipe, the pastry is shortcrust, rough puff or puff pastry. The filling consists of sliced or diced potatoes, swede, onions and diced or minced beef, seasoned mainly with salt and pepper. Vegetables make up at least 25 % and meat at least 12.5 % of the whole pasty. Other meat and other vegetables are not allowed; all ingredients of the filling must be raw when the pasty is sealed. In small amounts, together at most 5 % of the filling, butter, clotted cream, beef dripping, stock or starch, for example, may be added, provided they do not change the flavour. Artificial additives are banned in the filling.

The pasty is folded into a D shape, and the edge is pressed together and crimped by hand or by machine. It may be pricked or scored and glazed. It is baked slowly so that the flavours of the raw ingredients come through. Only the preparation up to baking has to take place in the area: unbaked or frozen, the pasty may be delivered to bakeries and outlets outside Cornwall and baked there.

Origin & history

Cornwall’s damp, mild climate is well suited to meat and vegetables; potatoes and swede have long been among the region’s most important horticultural products. The ingredients do not have to come from Cornwall, but according to the specification, in practice they still come from local farmers.

In the 16th and 17th centuries the pasty became widespread. Mining had existed in Cornwall for many centuries, with its heyday in the 18th and 19th centuries. By the end of the 18th century the pasty was the staple food of workers and their families; miners and farm workers took it to work, usually in a bag. Worgan’s Agricultural Survey of Cornwall of 1808 reports that the working man usually took his meat with him in a pasty, and records from the 1860s also mention children in the mines who carried pasties as “crib” or “croust”. A popular story says that the D shape allowed workers in the tin mines to warm up and eat the pasty underground; the crimped edge served as a handle and was thrown away because there was a lot of arsenic in many mines.

Postcards from 1901 to 1910 show the pasty, and cookery books such as “Good Things in England” (1922) and “Cornish Recipes, Ancient and Modern” (1929) contain recipes. Since the railway brought tourists to Cornwall, the pasty has been part of a visit. According to a 2002 study, Cornish Clotted Cream and the Cornish Pasty are the products of the region that visitors most often try and are most likely to take home.