Although no-one is sure when the pasty came into being (the Oxford English Dictionary suggests 1300), there is no question that it has long been considered one of Britain's most ancient and beloved foods.

Not only are pasties mentioned in a letter to Jane Seymour, the third wife of Henry the VIII (1491-1547) from her baker, but even Shakespeare was more than partial to a Cornish pasty! As you can see below, they appear in two of Shakespeare's plays:

The Merry Wives of Windsor: Act 1 Scene 1
PAGE: Wife, bid these gentlemen welcome. Come, we have a hot venison pasty to dinner: come gentlemen, I hope we shall drink down all unkindness.

All's Well That Ends Well: Act IV Scene III
PAROLLES: I will confess to what I know without constraint: if ye pinch me like a pasty, I can say no more.
The pasty became commonplace in the

The pasty's best known association stems from the 1800's when it adapted to meet the needs of the Cornish tin miners. The pasty, a "packed lunch", was a complete, hand-held hot meal, usually consisting of meat, potato, onion and swede (turnip) in a pastry casing. Mines often built large ovens on the surface to keep the pasties warm until it was time to eat. The thick "crimped" edges were originally for holding the pasty while eating, to avoid being poisoned by the arsenic sometimes found on their fingers. Miners would leave these "crimps" in the mine to appease the malevolent spirits they believed inhabited the deep mine shafts.

Pasty Facts

The word 'pasty' comes from a Middle English word meaning 'made of paste' (pastry). This is reminiscent of "en croute" (French) meaning "in crust"

One of the earliest references (via the Oxford English Dictionary) is from circa 1300, when it is referred to as a sort of raised pie using any type of meat.

In the Middle Ages it was permissible to eat at Lent 'porpoise baked with spices in pastry, made in the manner of a pasty'.

Pasties originally contained venison - as mentioned in Shakespeare's The Merry Wives of Windsor and 50 times in 46 diary entries by Samuel Pepys

It is believed that sometime in the 1700's the venison pasty (a preserve of the gentry) was turned into the cheaper beef pasty for the working classes - the miners, farmers and fishermen. This coincided with the growth of mining in Cornwall.

Cornwall Record Office has a copy of Mrs Polwhele’s 1740 AD recipe book that includes a pasty recipe involving soaking a rump of beef in claret, which was then enclosed in pastry and baked

The pasty recipe was handed down through the generations without the need for it to be written - in any case, not many could read or write in those days but everyone ate! Those that ate the venison pasties generally had uneducated servants to make them. ---

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