Last April, I flew with my husband and three children to the United Kingdom. Jet-lagged but happy, we drove our manual transmission car for five hours southwest from London to Cornwall, where the wild daffodils popped out of the hedge like bursts of sunshine, and the colors of sky and ocean seemed to blend together to create a dramatic panoramic.
We woke up our first morning in an old restored barn built before the United States was even a dream, pulled on our wellies, and hiked two miles across delightful, hedge-lined country lanes until we reached the stunning cliff walk. With the baby in my carrier and my two older children clutching my hands, we made our way down the jagged stone steps to the beach below. Like any good English beach, it was populated with several shell hunters in raincoats and boots, and had a hut where one could purchase a nice hot cup of tea.
The kids and I braved the wet and windy shore, eagerly searching for sea glass and shells, while my husband went to get us some tea. He returned not only with several steaming cuppas, but also a crescent-shaped pastry. We broke it apart and bit into the flaky dough, savoring the hot potatoes and steak inside.
“What is this special treat?” my 3-year-old asked, delighted, as she leaned in for another bite.
My husband and I smiled at each other—her first Cornish pasty experience was a success.
Digging Up History
The Cornish pasty—pronounced PASS-ty—originates from Cornwall, in the southwest of England, and carries a heritage almost as rich as the land it was developed in.While the region today is known for its gorgeous views, its ice cream, and its long coastal walks, the larger history of Cornwall is known for its mining.
With a landscape rich in mineral deposits, the area was ideal for mining tin and copper; in the 18th century, Cornwall was recognized as the mining center of the world. The mining life wasn’t an easy one. About 25 percent of the Cornish population worked in the mining industry, risking drowning and mine collapse in the excavation of metals. Those who lived to be 40 years old considered themselves lucky. Women and their daughters worked aboveground, grinding materials into smaller pieces.
Pasties were a typical miner’s lunch, made by housewives as sustenance for a long day underground. Miners normally couldn’t surface for lunch, so a pasty was, practically speaking, one of the earliest forms of a Lunchable. It was an all-in-one meal, wrapped up in pastry.
Allegedly, as tin miners’ wives delivered pasties to their husbands, they would shout out, “Oggy, oggy, oggy!” to which the miners would respond, “Oi, oi, oi!” It’s a chant I’ve heard repeated many times by my own grandfather, who, though raised in the north of England and isn’t Cornish, referred to a pasty as an oggy.
The word “pasty” originates from the Medieval word “French paste,” meaning anything that can be found in the pantry. Although it’s been recorded as early as the 1300s, it was in Cornwall that the word took on its meat, becoming commonly associated with the working-class miner’s meal. The pasty would be filled with potatoes, onions, and other vegetables, and occasionally meat.
Pasties were made with a thick, crimped edge of pastry along one side—which thrilled my daughter in April, but probably wouldn’t have been eaten by the tin miners. Because their hands would often be covered in arsenic from the mines, the crimped pastry was to be used as a handle for eating the pasty and then thrown out when finished.
Legend has it, though, that even those crusts weren’t wasted: They were thrown on the ground so that small ghosts, known as buccas, would eat them instead of causing any accidents for the men underground.
Spreading the Pasty
As the price of copper crashed in the late 1800s and work became scarce in Cornwall, miners began to migrate to other parts of the world in search of better fortunes: the United States, Mexico, South Africa, and Australia. With each passing decade, the situation became bleaker, and higher numbers of men left their families and children behind to find work elsewhere in the dig for silver and gold in the New World.Wherever they went, they left their mark. Cornish miners, known as “Cousin Jacks,” gained a reputation as some of the best and most progressive miners in the world at the time.
As we have seen time and time again throughout history, when people move to a new place, they take the comfort of their own food and heritage along with them. Soon enough, pasties began to emerge in those new regions: In 1968, Michigan Gov. George Romney declared May 24 as Pasty Day.
In 2011, to protect the original pasty and keep its origin story safe in Cornwall, Cornish pasties were granted a protected geographical indication status by the European Union. This means that a pasty can only be called a “Cornish pasty” if it’s made in Cornwall, in the shape of a D, and contains beef, turnip, onion, potato, and seasoning. And the dough must be shortcrust and crimped on the side.
On the beach in Cornwall that sunny, blustery day in April, my daughter didn’t know any of this. She only knew that what she was biting into was hot and delicious, and could keep her full until dinner.
Since we’ve been home, we’ve been experimenting with making our own pasties. While we can’t call them Cornish, since we live far from the picturesque cliffs and beaches with such a varied history, we hold the stories, geography, and that beach morning in our hearts as we bake.
Almost-Cornish Pasty
Makes 5 pasties- 5 cups flour
- 1 teaspoon sea salt
- 1 cup plus 5 tablespoons chilled butter, diced
- 1/2 cup water (plus more if needed)
- 1 pound skirt steak, chopped into 1/2-inch cubes
- 1 pound potatoes, peeled and diced into 1/2-inch pieces
- 2 onions, peeled and diced
- 1 turnip, peeled and chopped into 1/2-inch cubes
- Salt and pepper to taste
- 2 tablespoons milk, for wash
Meanwhile, combine the meat and vegetables, then season with salt and pepper. Set aside.
Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F. Line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper.
Roll out the dough onto a floured surface. Cut out 5 circles (you can trace a dinner plate), each about 10 inches in diameter, and place them on the baking sheets. Brush the edges with milk wash.
Add the meat and vegetable filling into the centers of the circles. For each pasty, fold the dough in half and crimp along the edge. Brush the tops with milk wash.
Bake for 50 minutes, or until the pasties are golden in color. Serve hot.
