Subject: Pasties

From: [email-masked] (Jenny Lynne Semenza)
Date: 29 Sep 93 08:26:24 -0700

Greetings

	I understand that pasties (breadish dough surrounding meat and 
vegetables) has a long history.  Does anyone have any references or know the 
history or origin of pasties.  I have seen recipes using bread dough, 
biscuit dough and pizza type dough for the outer crust.  These pasties have 
been baked, boiled and fried.  I am most interested in the English origins, 
though my first sample of a pastie was Russian.  

Thanks!

Jenny Lynne

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From: [email-masked] (Nick Maclaren)
Date: Wed, 29 Sep 1993 14:50:23 GMT

In article <[email-masked]>, [email-masked] (Jenny Lynne Semenza) writes:
|> 	I understand that pasties (breadish dough surrounding meat and 
|> vegetables) has a long history.  Does anyone have any references or know the 
|> history or origin of pasties.  I have seen recipes using bread dough, 
|> biscuit dough and pizza type dough for the outer crust.  These pasties have 
|> been baked, boiled and fried.  I am most interested in the English origins, 
|> though my first sample of a pastie was Russian.  

Traditional Cornish pasties are made of a hard pastry (i.e. strong flour,
more water and some kneading), filled with raw cubes of meat and vegetables
and then baked.  They are then wrapped in a cloth and keep warm from an
early morning baking until lunchtime.  However, a variant is a large pasty
that has slices cut off it when needed (and is usually eaten cold).  The
first form was a miner's lunch.  It is not true that they should be hard
enough to drop down a mine shaft without breaking, but they are a fairly
durable form of precooked food!

The vegetables must include turnip, and usually include potato - in fact,
they were often just turnip, potato and cabbage.  The meat cubes should be
rolled in flour and the whole contents lightly sprinkled with water before
sealing, to provide the gravy.  I was once told that the original pasties
were made around a flatfish, and that meat and vegetables came later, but
I have no certain knowledge of this.  A sure sign of a fake Cornish pasty
is minced meat.

The pastry is cut using a plate (a dinner plate for a man, a pudding plate
for a woman and a side plate for a child is the traditional rule), the
filling is put on one side and the other is folded over it and sealed with
water and thumb prints round the edge.  A hole is cut in the top before
baking.  They are actually very easy to make, because minor errors are
not serious, and make excellent picnic food.

It is getting increasingly difficult to get decent Cornish pasties in the
UK, and I avoid commercial ones on the 'foreign' side of the Tamar (where
I now live).  At their worst, they taste like minced cat in greasy cardboard.
Even in Cornwall, they can be pretty bad, but I have heard there are still
some local bakers who make good ones (I have not been back in years, myself).

Nick Maclaren
University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory,
New Museums Site, Pembroke Street,
Cambridge CB2 3QG, England.
Email:  [email-masked]
Tel.:   +44 223 334761
Fax:    +44 223 334679

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From: [email-masked] (Sandra Loosemore)
Date: 29 Sep 1993 13:02:42 -0400

The Upper Michigan variety of pasty is a variant of the Cornish pasty,
brought over by miners in the 19th century.  The crust is a thin and
chewy pastry made with suet, and they're filled with meat, potatoes,
rutabaga, onions, and sometimes carrots.

I've never sampled a genuine Cornish pasty, but when I've found
supposed English-style pasties in other parts of North America, I've
noticed two main differences: the crust is thicker and more dry and
flakey (probably made with vegetable shortening instead of suet), and
the filling contains a higher proportion of meat to vegetables, and no
rutabaga.

-Sandra

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From: [email-masked] (Mark Waks)
Date: Wed, 29 Sep 1993 22:14:27 GMT

>though my first sample of a pastie was Russian.  

Well, included in my 13th century Andalusian feast were some basic meat
pasties. I'm not sure that the dough was right (in fact, I'd bet that
it was wrong), but the recipe is clearly intended to be a pasty: take
chicken, cook it with spices and onions, wrap it in bread dough, and
bake, getting something that keeps a good long while...

I'll post the recipes from my feast in a subsequent message...

				-- Justin du Coeur
				   Who has recovered enough from the feast
				     to think about it again...

Random Quote du Jour:

"Regulation is the refuge of a failed argument."
		-- Arval Benicoeur

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From: Gretchen Miller <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 30 Sep 1993 18:18:26 -0400

Jenny,

Yup, pastries are quite old, and apparently a common thing to cook food
in.  Whether or not you ate the pastry with the meat you cooked in it,
or whether you just used the pastry as a pan and storage medium is not
clear.  If you followed the "pizza" discussion a week or so ago, you
followed a discussion that is probably equally applicable to pastriy.

Gervase Markham in The English Huswife (1615) talks about the different
kinds of pastry you use for different types of dishes: For heavy meats,
like venison, beef or mutton, you use a thick crust of rye flour, for
more delicate meats and fish (I think) you use a "course wheat flour"
which I would translate nowdays to "whole wheat" (though Markham
probably meant a flour that had not been finely milled and sifted, which
is not necessarily the same thing as whole wheat), and for delicate
things like chicken, pigeons, fruit, you use a fine wheat flour
(probably like today's cake flour, or maybe all purpose flour).  Most of
these pastes are mixed with some water, butter and egg (usually egg
yolks), the yolks making them stiff enough to hold themselves up.

By the way, does anyone know about the origin of pie plates?  From some
small acquaintance with the literature, I wonder if pie pans such as we
use today for making pies were used pre-1700 or so.  The pree 1700 works
all seem to talk about raising coffins, and making the dough stiff
enough to be able to raise a coffin, and some (such as Markham) mention
raising your coffins into various shapes, or raising them an inch or
two, which seem to me to imply that a baking dish was not used to hold
up these pies.  Any comments, suggestions, sources?

toodles, gretchen

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From: [email-masked] (Cynthia Sanoy)
Date: Fri, 1 Oct 1993 16:52:02 GMT

Was your "Russian pastie" filled with fish and rice?  I saw an article in
Gourmet magazine a year or two ago dealing with these. The were called
(ahem... let's see how close I can come to the spelling and pronounciation)
"kulibiaka", and I recall a picture of a large, long pastry filled with
salmon, rice and vegetables shaped in such a way that the slices were 
triangular. 

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From: [email-masked] (Henry Troup)
Date: Fri, 1 Oct 1993 17:47:47 GMT

In Scotland we call them "bridies". The specific 
family favorite type is a Forfar bridie - meat (beef steak), onions,
and peas, in a hard pastry.

A fake kind seen often in Dundee has flaky puff pastry.

-- 
Henry Troup - [email-masked] (Canada) - BNR owns but does not share my opinions
	   A former member of a religious para military organization

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From: [email-masked] (Darryl Okahata)
Date: Mon, 4 Oct 1993 16:17:39 GMT

[ Followups to rec.food.cooking, as this topic is getting off the beaten
  track. ]

     Can someone point me to a cookbook with some recipes for pasties
(preferably the hard pastry type)?

     -- Darryl Okahata
	Internet: [email-masked]

DISCLAIMER: this message is the author's personal opinion and does not
constitute the support, opinion or policy of Hewlett-Packard or of the
little green men that have been following him all day.

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From: [email-masked] (elizabeth worden)
Date: Fri, 8 Oct 1993 17:19:52 GMT

>Was your "Russian pastie" filled with fish and rice?  I saw an article in

Years ago, when I lived near San Francisco, we used to go to the
Miniature Bakery and eat wonderful Russian food.  Since I moved
I have been looking for a recipe to make piroshki that came close
to theirs.  Does ANYONE out there have one?  Thank you!  :>)