Simple Chicken Cornish Pasty Recipe (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.

The Origins of the Pasty

Pasties date back as far as the 13th century, at which time they were a pie baked without a dish of French origins, with a rich filling of venison, veal, beef, lamb or seafood, gravy and fruit. The name pasty is a mutation of the Medieval French “paste”, for pie.

We make pasties in our bakery in Pool, Cornwall (head office). Our ingredients are simple: vegetables, meat, margarine, flour, water, seasoning.

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.

The crimped crust on the side was used as a kind of handle. The levels of arsenic in the tin mines meant that the miners hands would be grubby and likely covered in this highly toxic substance. So the miners would hold onto the crust to eat their pastie, and then discard it.

No debate here: carrots are "sacrilege" as the Cornish Pasty Association points out: the swede adds all the sweetness this dish needs. Older recipes tend to be vague on exact details but potatoes should be waxy, as the CPA makes clear, rather than the floury ones Mark Hix uses, so they keep their shape when cooked.

Here's an ancient illustration of it where the pencil title calls it Boletus betulinus. I check the modern scientific name and it's apparently called Fomitopsis betulina now. I'm sure that won't be the last change in its scientific name.

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.

Cornish pasties are made of simple ingredients which makes them much healthier than other fast food. It is stuffed with real vegetables, not just lettuce leaves and tomatoes as in fast food burgers. The swede fillings are enriched with calcium which is good for building the bone.

A bridie or Forfar bridie is a Scottish meat pasty that originates from Forfar, Scotland.

What to eat with Cornish pasty? ›

Top tips: Serve with mashed potato and vegetables, or salad and baked beans.

However, another 14 per cent did get it right, as Graham describes, “the traditional way to eat a pasty is with the pasty held in a horizontal position and holding the crimp, starting with the filled pastry and working your way outwards.

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.

Pasties were made with a thick crimped edge along one side so the miners could use the crimp as a handle to hold on to while eating. The miners hand would often be covered in arsenic from the mine, so the miners would discard the handle when they were done.

No debate here: carrots are "sacrilege" as the Cornish Pasty Association points out: the swede adds all the sweetness this dish needs. Older recipes tend to be vague on exact details but potatoes should be waxy, as the CPA makes clear, rather than the floury ones Mark Hix uses, so they keep their shape when cooked.