The pasty and its global family: a field guide and scoring card
Fold pastry over a filling, seal the edge and bake it, and you have a meal that fits in a pocket. Miners, sailors, farm hands and commuters have all worked this out, which is why nearly every food culture has one. This is a field guide to the family, with a scoring card at the end so you can settle arguments properly.
A confession first. We are a small online shop in Devon, on the wrong side of the Tamar, and we do not sell pasties. We just like them, and we sell some of the things you would take on the picnic.
The Cornish pasty: the one with the paperwork
Cornish pasty has been a protected name since 2011, so the words on the label mean something. It must be made in Cornwall. It is shaped like a D and crimped along one side, never over the top. Inside go beef, potato, swede (which Cornwall calls turnip) and onion, with salt and pepper and nothing else, and everything goes in raw so it cooks in its own steam. The Cornish Pasty Association puts the rule in one line: if it is not crimped, it is not Cornish.
The Devon cousin, and the story of the handle
Cross the Tamar and the crimp traditionally moves to the top, which is as much as we will say about that from where we sit. The best-loved story about the side crimp is that tin miners held the pasty by its thick edge and threw that piece away, keeping arsenic-dusted fingers off their dinner. It is a good story, told on official pages and pub walls alike, and nobody has to believe it to enjoy the pasty.
Where the miners went, the pasty went
When Cornish mining declined in the nineteenth century, the miners took their skills abroad and their lunch with them. In Michigan's Upper Peninsula they arrived for the copper mines in the 1840s; Finnish and Italian miners who came later adopted the pasty, and it is now the region's signature food, rutabaga and all. In Mexico, Cornish miners reached the silver town of Real del Monte in the 1820s. Their pasties became pastes, now filled with chilli as often as potato, and the town has a paste museum, a festival and a twinning with Redruth.
The Jamaican patty
The patty is what happens when several histories meet in one pastry. The folded shape is usually traced to the pasties of British colonists and the empanadas of the Spanish before them. The golden colour comes from turmeric or annatto in the flaky crust, a mark of the Indian cooks who came to Jamaica as indentured workers, and the heat comes from scotch bonnet and allspice. Eaten in coco bread, it is a full meal. If the Cornish pasty is a quiet lunch, the patty is the same idea turned up.
The empanada
The name comes from the Spanish empanar, to wrap in bread. Empanadas are generally thought to have begun in Galicia, in north-west Spain, where the empanada gallega is still a large flat pie cut into slices. A Catalan cookbook of 1520 already mentions them filled with seafood. Spanish ships carried the idea to Latin America and the Philippines, where each country now has its own filling, its own fold and firm views on both.
The samosa: a cousin, not a descendant
The samosa owes nothing to Cornwall and is centuries older than the miners' pasty. Its name goes back to the Persian sanbosag, and medieval writers describe small meat pastries of that name across the Middle East and Central Asia. It reached the Indian subcontinent in the thirteenth or fourteenth century with cooks at the Delhi Sultanate's courts. The potato filling came much later, because the potato did. Same idea, different family tree.
The Forfar bridie and the Bedfordshire clanger
Scotland's bridie, from Forfar in Angus, is a horseshoe of shortcrust around beef and onion, with no potato. One story says it was made for the bride's meal at weddings, the horseshoe being for luck; another credits a Margaret Bridie of Glamis who sold them at the Buttermarket. The Bedfordshire clanger is the odd one out: a long suet roll made for farm workers, by legend with meat at one end and jam or fruit at the other, so that lunch and pudding arrive together. Historians are not sure how often the sweet end really happened. Modern bakers make sure it does.
And then there is Greggs
No field guide to British pastry is complete without the Newcastle bakery that feeds the nation's high streets. The sausage roll is the bestseller and the steak bake has its own following; the vegan steak bake arrived in 2020 with, the company said, 96 layers of puff pastry. Greggs also has a place in pasty history. When the 2012 Budget proposed VAT on hot takeaway pastries, the chain delivered a petition to Downing Street, the press named it the pasty tax, and the government changed course within weeks. A bake is not a Cornish pasty, and nobody in the queue at eight in the morning has ever minded.
Take one out for the day
A pasty is at its best eaten outdoors, slightly too hot, with a view. Wrap it in a tea towel to keep it warm, bring something to drink and something to sit on, and keep an eye on the gulls.
More in Outdoor adventure, Coastal home.
Or make your own
Homemade pasties are forgiving: shortcrust, a sharp knife for dicing everything small and even, and a hot oven. Season more than you think, crimp however your family crimps, and call them what you like as long as it is not Cornish.
More in Coastal home, Heritage and craft.
The pasty scoring card
For pasties, patties, pastes, bridies, bakes and anything else folded and baked. Score each line out of 10. Eat all contenders on the same day, warm, and argue afterwards.
| Out of 10 | Contender 1 | Contender 2 | Contender 3 | Contender 4 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Name, and where from | ||||
| Crust Golden, properly baked, short or flaky as its kind should be. No pale patches. | ||||
| Crimp Neat, sealed, evenly spaced. Extra credit if you want to eat it rather than leave it. | ||||
| Filling Generous and filled to the corners. You can tell what each piece is. | ||||
| Seasoning Pepper you notice, or spice with purpose. Not bland, not a dare. | ||||
| Juiciness Moist inside without a soggy base. Gravy stays in the pasty, not on your sleeve. | ||||
| Structure Holds together in one hand from first bite to last. | ||||
| Warmth Still warm at the final corner. | ||||
| Value How you feel about the price once it is gone. | ||||
| Total out of 80 |
House rules
- Gull tax: take off 5 if a gull got any of it.
- Add 2 if it was eaten outdoors with a view.
- Add 1 if the baker crimped it by hand in front of you.
- The judge's decision is final until the next pasty.
The pasty and its global family: a field guide and scoring card · kernowtradingco.com/guide/pasty-family-guide-and-scoring-card.html
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