Cornish Pasty Recipe |Chicken Recipes | Jamie Oliver (2024)

FAQs

What is the difference between a pasty and a Cornish pasty? ›

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.

These Cornish Pasties are filled with a mixture of well-seasoned steak, onions, potatoes and swede (or rutabaga/yellow turnip if you're in the US). The meat and vegetables are placed in the pastry raw, with a really good pinch of salt and pepper and a few dots of butter, then sealed and cooked in the pastry.

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.

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.

The humble pasty, to be the genuine article, has to contain 12.5% meat and 25% vegetables. The meat is beef, and the veg should be potato, onion and swede (turnip). These ingredients are uncooked when added to the pastry and are baked slowly for succulence.

'Tiddy oggy' is a rather wonderful word for a Cornish pasty, used in Eng. regional (south-west.)

No meat other than beef, and no vegetables apart from those listed can be used in the filling. There must be at least 12.5% beef and 25% vegetables in the whole pasty. All the ingredients must be uncooked when the pasty is assembled and then slowly baked to develop all that famous Cornish pasty taste and succulence.

No debate here: carrots are "sacrilege" as the Cornish Pasty Association points out: the swede adds all the sweetness this dish needs.

Why can't you say Cornish pasty? ›

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”.

American pasties are the American equivalent to Cornish pasties. The border between Northern Wisconsin and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan is delineated by a line of pasty shops.

A pasty is known as a "tiddy oggy" when steak is replaced with an extra potato, "tiddy" meaning potato and "oggy" meaning pasty and was eaten when times were hard and expensive meat could not be afforded.

Mexicans refer to the Cornish pasty as a paste, and its ingredients' list is rather different compared to its Cornish cousin. In fact, there are various types of fillings used in paste today.

The Mighty Cornish Pasty

There must be at least 12.5% beef and 25% vegetables in the whole pasty. All the ingredients must be uncooked when the pasty is assembled and then slowly baked to develop all that famous Cornish pasty taste and succulence.

There are five main types of pastry dough for creating pastries: flaky, shortcrust, puff, choux and filo. All of them are made primarily from flour, water and fat. However, these five types of pastry dough each have slightly different core ingredients, different ratios of ingredients and, ultimately, different uses.