Diced pieces of prime Forequarter beef, potato, swede
and onion, blended together with a creamy stilton
sauce made from only the finest mature stilton cheese.
These Cornish Pasties are for the cheese connoisseur!
Upon breaking open the short crust pastry case the aroma
of the mature stilton floods out, accompanied by the
delicious fresh vegetable ingredients, locally farmed in
Cornwall.
Our Steak & Ale cornish pasties contain Prime Cornish Steak marinated in Cornish ale and layered over fresh vegetables mixed with a special “malt and hop” seasoning. (on short crust pastry), a popular pasty theme for students. Sticking close to the Cornish produce, this pasty uses a local ale to marinte the prime trimmed steak in, before layering with suede, potato and that special seasoning true to the orgins of the original cornish pasty recipe.
By far the favourite of the Cornish Pasty family, the Traditional Cornish Steak Pasty recipe has evolved through the ages straying only very slightly from original Cornish Pasty recipes.
The Real McCoy, freshly prepared potato, swede and onion, layered with prime Cornish steak and infused with the very secret seasoning!
( encased in short crust pastry). This pasty is normally served in small, medium, large and Giant sizes!…although the Giant Cornish Pasties are not for the faint hearted! Cornish Pasty manufacturers pride themselves on farming the pasty ingredients locally…that is the tradition!
A variety of flavours have evolved since the original Traditonal Cornish Steak pasty (Oggy), more details to follow on the ingredients and flavours…watch this category for more mouthwatering flavours!
The pasty is a traditional symbol of Cornwall. Pasty myths and legends abound, nobody can quite pinpoint when Cornish Pasties originated, but there is evidence of them being made during the reign of Henry VIII.
Over the centuries they became the staple diet of Cornish miners, engineers and blacksmiths, everyone but fishermen, as it was considered bad luck to take a pasty on board a fishing boat. According to superstition, it is the pasty that keeps the devil out of Cornwall.
The wives of the Tin Miners would make a Pasty for their husbands to take to the mine, usually containing leftovers of meals from the week, they would add pepper to disguise the taste of the mixture of different meals. In one end the savoury and in the other the sweet, a two course meal in a pastry case! The crimp would be finished in a knot towards the end of the pasty, this knot would be the only piece of the meal that the Miner would not eat as it was rumoured to keep the Devil away!
It is also rumoured that the pastry case was a protection to the Miner, the case served as a protective pocket for the meat (and sometimes fruit) filling, as the Miners would take arsenic onto their hands when Mining the tin. The arsenic contaminated Pastry case was then discarded…what sacrilege!
Sometimes the Pastry case would bear the initials of the Miner so that the savoury lunch could be eaten and then later the Miner would return to eat the remaining fruit filled case. The initials would either be scored into the case of the Pasty or laid on top with pastry pieces.
The pastry case acts as a small pressure cooker during the ‘bake-off’ this assists in the cooking process containing the heat long after the Pasty is removed from the oven.
To make an authentic pasty, the vegetables, comprising of onions, potatoes and suede (they call it turnip in Cornwall) must be diced. The meat, usually skirt of chuck steak, should be chopped. Baking takes about an hour, during which time the filling steams and it’s flavours blend together. Freshly baked pasties stay warm for up to an hour.
You never talk of a ‘Cornish Pasty’ in Cornwall. It is always “Pasty”, pure and simple.
Today, visitors believe that a trip to Cornwall would not be complete without tasting a Cornish Pasty, Proper Pasty Company are proud to bring a piece of Cornwall to the North of England.
The perfect Cornish Pasty has to come from Cornwall first and foremost! There is a long standing debate in the heart of manufacturing Cornish Pasties, laying claim to authentication…how can a Cornish Pasty be a Cornish Pasty unless its been made in Cornwall? These debates go on and on, do Yorkshire puddings have to be manufactured in Yorkshire! Arguments ‘for’ and ‘against’ ensue, all we know is that as Cornish Pasty connoisseurs we only trust the original, the Pasty that has been hand crimped and hand filled in a Cornish factory…could there be any other?
The characteristics of the Proper Authentic Cornish Pasties are
a) Hand Made (not machined please!)
b) Cornish origin (they get our vote)
c) Smuggled via the A30 (the second best thing to come out of Cornwall)
d) Authentic Cornish Vegetable ingredients
e) A secret seasoning is essential to the Traditional Cornish Pasty
f) More ingredient than air!
g) A hand crimping to the side…not on top like a Stegasaurus!
What more can we tell you? The debate about Cornish Pasties goes on, we know where we stand on the issue do you? Visit one of our shops and let us know what you think, Proper Pasty Company bring that unmistakable taste of Cornwall to the North of England.
The appearance of the Pasty, in our opinion, is side crimped first and foremost. The crimp on the roof is probably the most common home-made style of Cornish Pasty, it’s the way your Mum makes them, but we feel that the Pasty is best eaten holding the side crimp as a handle so that a ‘true bite’ can be delivered, resulting in an optimum meat and/or vegetable mouthful!
The quality of the Pastry is a key factor in the quality of the best Cornish Pasties, whether it is Flaky of Short Crust Pastry it must be consistent.
Hand layering is a tradition handed down through the production process, machines deliver a more uniform fill we agree but it doesn’t deliver authenticity! A hand made pasty must be hand made, like a Bentley or a Rolls Royce, this Cornish culinary delight upholds the tradition of all things hand made and high quality.
Diced, not sliced! The vegetables in Proper Cornish Pasties should be diced as should the meat. The dicing process contributes to the eating experience of true Cornish Pasties, solid chunks of hand trimmed Chuck Steak, Chicken Breast, Suede and Potato are amongst the finest of the chunky ingredients in our Pasties.
Last but not least, Cornish farmed vegetables are vital ingredients to Authentic Cornish Pasties.
Hand made, hand crimped, hand layered and Cornish farmed these are the characteristics of a Proper Pasty Company Cornish Pasty.
This blog has been launched to celebrate the Cornish Pasty and other things Cornish. We are seeking stories fom around the globe relating to anything originating from the South West peninsula of the UK. Our main focus is the Pasty or Oggy as it is more commonly referred to locally, taking a variety of forms around the globe but it’s origins remain steadfast in the County of Cornwall!
