The origins of the pasty (sometimes written as pastie) are largely unknown. It has been conjectured that the pasty originated in Cornwall. In the 1800s, pasties (sometimes pastys) had evolved to meet the needs of Cornish tin miners, as tin mining was a major Cornish industry at the time. Tradition claims that the pasty was originally made as lunch (‘croust’ in the Cornish language) for Cornish miners who were unable to return to the surface to eat. The story goes that, covered in dirt from head to foot (including some arsenic often found with tin), they could hold the pasty by the folded crust and eat the rest of the pasty without touching it, discarding the dirty pastry. The pastry they threw away was supposed to appease the knockers, capricious spirits in the mines who might otherwise lead miners into danger. A related tradition holds that it is bad luck for fishermen to take pasties to sea.
The pasty’s dense, folded pastry could stay warm for 8 to 10 hours and, when carried close to the body, helped the miner stay warm. In such pasties meat and each vegetable would each have its own pastry “compartment,” separated by a pastry partition. Traditional bakers in former mining towns will still bake pasties with fillings to order, marking the customer’s initials with raised pastry. This practice was started because the miners used to eat part of their pasty for breakfast and leave the remaining half for lunch, meaning that a way to identify the pasties was needed. Some mines kept large ovens to keep the pasties warm until mealtime. It is said that a good pasty should be strong enough to endure being dropped down a mine shaft.
Pasties are still very popular throughout Devon and Cornwall, and also in the rest of the United Kingdom. Pasties in these areas are usually hand-made and sold in bakeries or (less often) specialist pasty shops. They are also sold in supermarkets, but these are mass produced and often taste entirely different from traditional Cornish pasties. Several pasty shop chains have also opened up in recent years, selling pasties that are more traditional than the common mass-produced varieties while still offering novel fillings. It is common in some areas for pasties to be eaten “on-the-move” from the paper bag they are sold in, making them essentially a fast food.
A pasty from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan
Cornish miner immigrants helped to spread pasties into the rest of the world, in the 19th century. As tin mining in Cornwall began to fail, miners brought their expertise and traditions to new mining regions. As a result, pasties are very common in Nevada County, California; Silver Bow County, Montana and Deer Lodge County, Montana; parts of Wisconsin; and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. In these areas, pasties are now a major tourist draw, including an annual Pasty Fest in early July in Calumet, Michigan. Pasties in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan have a particularly unusual history, as a small influx of Finnish immigrants followed the Cornish miners, in 1864. These Finns (and many other ethnic groups) adopted the pasty for use in the Copper Country copper mines. About 30 years later, a much larger flood of Finnish immigrants found their countrymen baking pasties, and assumed that it was a Finnish invention. As a result, the pasty has become strongly associated with Finnish culture in this area.
Pasties are also found in the slate mining region of eastern Pennsylvania, where settlers from Cornwall and parts of Wales also were fond of the pasty and used them consistently as a food source for men working in slate quarries in the “Slate Belt” region that included the towns of Bangor, East Bangor, Pen Argyl and Wind Gap, Pennsylvania. Many churches to this day hold “pastie suppers” or sell the items as a means of making money for their parishes.
Pasties are also found in South Australia (particularly the Yorke Peninsula). Most country bakeries in South Australia produce pasties, as well as large brandnames such as Balfour’s and Vili’s. They may also be found in the Mexican cities of Pachuca and Real del Monte, and are commonly served with different ingredients, such as jalapeño peppers.
In 1985 a group of Young Farmers in Cornwall spent 7 hours making a record-breaking pasty – over 32ft long. This was believed to have been beaten in 1999 when bakers in Falmouth made their own giant pasty during the town’s first ever pasty festival.