Cornish Pasties

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Cornish Pasties are hand-sized pouches of pastry with savoury fillings inside.

They are made in a half-moon shape 7 to 9 inches (18 to 23 cm) long, and crimpled around around the edges on one side to seal them.

The pastry should be crisp and firm, not soggy, and able to be able to be held up by hand. Purists insist that the dough for the pastry should be made of suet or lard.

Inside the Cornish Pasty, there are chunks of meat (often mince now), onions, and potatoes. Peas were not traditional but are becoming popular (mind you, potatoes weren't traditional either at one point.)

Modern variations include vegetarian versions made with the obligatory whole-wheat dough, or cheese and bacon or pizza fillings.

Cornish Pasties evolved as a very "functional food." They were meant to be a complete, portable meal for farmers, fishers and later miners.

In Bedfordshire, England, they take the "complete meal" concept even further: the savoury part of the meal goes in one end of the Pasty, fruit in another and then it becomes both lunch and dessert. They call these "Bedfordshire Clangers."


History
Initials shaped out of pastry were often put on them, so that people would know whose was which.

The upper peninsula part of Michigan state in America was the recipient of many Cornish immigrants starting in the 1840s to work in the mines there. To this day, the area is a hotspot for Cornish Pasties in America.

In the summer of 2008, the Cornish Pasty Association headed in Cornwall applied to the EU for PGI status for their product.

Literature & Lore
"The Cornish pasty [is] one of the best examples in the world of what one might call functional food. For the Cornish pasty ... is not merely delicious food, it was designed for a certain quite definite purpose; it was designed to be carried to work and eaten in the hand, to be taken down the mine, to sea, to the fields. You will see a Cornishman munching his tasty pasty squatting in the narrow tin-mine workings, sitting on the nets in his leaping fishing boat, leaning against a grassy bank whilst the patient plough-horses wait."

-- Philip Harben. Traditional Dishes of Britain. London: The Bodley Head, 1953. pp 9 to 10.



Cornish legend says that the devil wouldn't cross the Tamar River into Cornwall, as he had heard stories that frightened him about what they actually put inside the pasties.

Language Notes
Pronounced "pah stees", not "pay stees."

Known as "oggies" in Cornwall.

In the late 1500s, they were referred to as "ogye pye."

Acknowlegements


Savill, Richard. Cornish pasty in European battle for protected status. London: Daily Telegraph. 25 July 2008.

Taylor, Matthew. Devon claims 200-year lead on the Cornish pasty. Manchester: The Guardian. 13 November 2006.

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