Cornish Pasty Recipe | A Traditional English Pasty (2024)

FAQs

What is the secret of the Cornish pasty? ›

Use a firm waxy potato such as Maris Peer or Wilja. A floury potato will disintegrate on cooking. Crimping is one of the secrets to a true Cornish pasty. A good hand crimp is usually a sign of a good handmade pasty.

A pasty is a handheld meat pie. To be considered authentic, according to the Cornish Pasty Association, it must use diced beef, potato, rutabaga (swede in the U.K.), and onion. Beef skirt steak is the most common cut of meat used.

These pasties (and the alleged venison pasty 1660s London diarist Samuel Pepys suspected was actually beef) were little more than cuts of meat wrapped in pastry dough. By then the Cornish pasty—made from chipped beef, potatoes, swedes (rutabagas) and onions—had already taken its place in Cornwall's regional cuisine.

We make pasties in our bakery in Pool, Cornwall (head office). Our ingredients are simple: vegetables, meat, margarine, flour, water, seasoning. Our salads and sandwiches are made in our kitchen in Scorrier. The Cornish Oven shops are conveniently located with plenty of parking and open everyday.

Traditionally, pasties were made with different fillings at each end. One end containing meat and vegetables, and one end with a sweet filling. The sweet end would be marked with an initial so the miners knew what side to eat first. Today, Cornish pasties are filled with steak, potatoes, swede (rutabaga) and onions.

There will always be great debate about the origin of the pasty, but one easy way to detect the Devon pasty from the Cornish is that the Devon pasty has a top-crimp and is oval in shape, whereas the Cornish pasty is semi-circular and side-crimped along the curve.

Tradition has it that the original pasties contained meat and vegetables in one end and jam or fruit in the other end, in order to give the hard-working men 'two courses'. Cornish housewives also marked their husband's initials on the left-hand side of the pastry casing, in order to avoid confusion at lunchtime.

It must only contain: Roughly diced (or minced) beef, sliced or diced potato, swede (or as some call it, turnip), onion, seasoning to taste (mainly salt & pepper – we're not telling your our secret seasoning!). Yes – you read that right... No carrots!

century depicting both top and side crimped Cornish pasties. One story that top crimpers will bring up again and again is that miners held the pasty by the side crust so as not to contaminate the pasty. This just does not hold up. How did the miner carry his pasty to work? in his bare hands?

You won't find this in Greggs! Chef creates world's most expensive Cornish pasty with Japanese Wagyu beef, French onions and Indian peppercorns... with a £230 price tag.

What is the original shape of a Cornish pasty? ›

According to the PGI status, a Cornish pasty should be shaped like a 'D' and crimped on one side, not on the top. Its ingredients should include beef, swede (called turnip in Cornwall), potato and onion, with a light seasoning of salt and pepper, keeping a chunky texture.

A Cornish pasty is a small pie with meat and vegetables inside.

Their hands probably had arsenic on from the mining, so really the crust stopped them from getting poisoned. Hoggan or 'Oggy' is the slang name for a Cornish Pasty. When the wives of the miners arrived, they would shout down the mineshaft 'Oggy!

In Cornwall, a pasty is often called an “Oggie”, and while it is unclear as to where the word originated, some people have suggested that it is derived from hoggan, a kind of bag in which the miners carried their croust (croust is the Cornish term for lunch).

Since 2011, the Cornish Pasty has enjoyed protected status under Protected Food Names legislation; so only a pasty made to a specific recipe in Cornwall can be called a “Cornish Pasty”.

The crust (crimp) served as a 'handle' – a means of holding the pasty with dirty hands without contaminating the meal. Arsenic commonly accompanies tin within the ore that they were mining so, to avoid arsenic poisoning, the crimp was an essential part of the pasty.

According to the Cornish Pasty Association, a genuine one should contain roughly diced or minced beef, sliced or diced potato, swede, onion and seasoning to taste. The CPA is pretty strict on that and adds: 'No meat other than beef, and no vegetables apart from those listed can be used in the filling.