Authentic Cornish Pasty Recipe
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The national dish of Cornwall, England, this authentic Cornish Pasty recipe features savory flaky pastry pockets filled with beef and vegetables. Cornish pasties have a long and fascinating history and are the very essence of comfort food. Learn how to make a Cornish pasty the authentic and traditional way.
I love Great Britain. I lived in Cambridgeshire, England for nearly 7 years and my husband spent 2 years in Liverpool and north Wales. We’re both Anglophiles through and through and go back at least once a year for a visit with our kids. We love every area of Great Britain and it’s hard to pinpoint a favorite area. But Cornwall holds a very special place in our hearts and no matter where else in England we’re visiting, we always make time for a visit to Cornwall.
A Brief Cornish Family History
We love Cornwall not only because of its striking natural beauty, rustic charm and rich culture, but also because it’s home to my husband’s namesake ancestors, the Killigrew family (later changed to Killebrew when his great+ grandfather immigrated to the U.S.). The Killigrews were landed gentry and one of the most prominent families in Cornwall. They founded the port town of Falmouth, built and lived in Arwenack Manor, and were the royally appointed de facto captains of Pendennis Castle. We always look forward to a return visit to these family sites including St. Budock church where the Killigrew family held front row seats, are buried beneath the floor in front of the altar, and where a well-known painted wall edifice stands depicting Todd’s great+ grandparents kneeling in prayer towards each other.
I can’t claim as close (or as impressive) of an association to Cornwall as Todd, unfortunately. But I do have a great+ grandmother from Scotland (wife to an admiral who regularly sailed down to Cornwall on business) who died and is buried in Cornwall. And it’s like I always say, if you’re going to die (as most people tend to do), there’s no better place to do it than in Cornwall.
With our close connection with and love for Cornwall, we also feel a close kinship with its traditional foods, the most famous of which is the Cornish pasty, considered the national dish of Cornwall.
What is a Cornish Pasty?
A Cornish pasty is a turnover-shaped baked shortcrust pastry filled with beef and vegetables. The edges are sealed by crimping them in characteristic Cornish fashion.
In 2011, Cornish pasties were given both a Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) and Protected Geographical Indication (PGI) status, which means that in order for these pasties to be made commercially and bear the name “Cornish pasty”, they have to meet very specific requirements. These requirements are as follows:
- They have to be made in Cornwall.
- They can only contain beef, potato, Swede (rutabaga), onion, salt and pepper. No other meat, no other vegetables, no other seasonings allowed.
- The ingredients must be raw when the pasties are assembled and then slowly baked to produce the traditional Cornish pasty flavor and texture.
- The edges of the pasties must be sealed by crimping them in traditional Cornish fashion.
No culinary license allowed here and any deviations from these parameters will land you in stocks at the market square for public shaming. Well, that may be a stretch. But you will incur a fine.
The Origin of the Cornish Pasty
The Cornish pasty has a unique and interesting history that goes back centuries. Cornwall had the biggest tin mining and one of the biggest copper mining industries in the world and the pasties were originally developed for Cornish miners. These men worked deep underground and needed a lunch that would meet the demands of their work environment. The thick shortcrust dough and dense filling would stay warm for several hours until lunchtime or could be easily reheated over the flame of an oil lamp.
The pasties were sealed with a thick crimp to hold in the contents and to provide something the miner’s could hold onto while eating the pasty. In this way their dirtied fingers, which could often contain traces of arsenic, wouldn’t contaminate the rest of the pasty. The crimped edge was sometimes extended out to form a little dough handle they could hold onto and then discard when they were done eating.
The filling was a hearty one that provided needed sustenance and the pasty was compact enough that it could easily be carried in a small lunchbox down the mine and eaten without utensils. Some historians also believe that the miner’s initials would sometimes be engraved in the dough at one end of the pasty so that if the miner didn’t finish it in one sitting they could easily identify it as their own.
Thoughtful wives would even take their ingenuity a step further and make pasties that were divided in two sections: One half would contain the savory filling and the other half a sweet filling for dessert. In this way the ingenious Cornish pasty was a complete meal for Cornwall’s hard-working miners.
A Few Pictures of Cornwall’s Historic Mines
Tips for Making the Best Cornish Pasties
- A good, flaky shortcrust pastry is imperative, and I’m sharing my shortcrust recipe with you below that will ensure excellent results.
- Depending on how thin you roll out your shortcrust pastry you risk having the “hard” ingredients (the potatoes and rutabagas) pierce through the dough. If you prefer a thinner crust and you want to avoid that you can place the softer ingredients on the top and bottom with the harder ingredients sandwiched in the middle: Place the onions on the bottom followed by the potatoes and rutabagas and then the meat on top.
- Use firm, waxy potatoes so they hold their shape. Starchy potatoes will disintegrate during baking and turn mushy.
- Use a lean cut of beef. Traditional Cornish pasties use skirt steak from the underside belly of the cow because it’s lean and free of gristle.
- Add a couple of pats of butter on top of the filling ingredients followed by a light sprinkling of flour. This will both form the gravy as well as absorb the liquids from the vegetables as their cooking to avoid a soggy pastry crust.
Cornish Pasty Recipe
Let’s get started!
First make your shortcrust pastry:
Place the flour and salt in a food processor and pulse a few times until combined. Add the cold butter and lard and pulse a few more times until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs.
Add the water a little at a time, pulsing between additions, until the mixture begins to come together. DO NOT over-mix the dough or the pastry crust will be tough and won’t be flaky.
Form the dough into a ball, flatten into a 1-inch thick disk, wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 3 hours before using (this is crucial). (Can be refrigerated for a few days or frozen for up to 3 months.)
Roll the pastry dough into a log and cut it into 6 equal pieces.
Wrap and keep the other 5 pieces chilled in the fridge while you’re working on one at a time. Roll the dough out on a lightly floured work surface to a 8 inch circle that’s about 1/8 inch thick. You can use an 8-inch plate as your guide and cut the dough around it to form your circle.
Layer the filling (each ingredient to be divided out between 6 pasties, there may be some excess remaining): Put layer of potatoes down the center of the pastry circle, leaving about 3/4 inch space on the top and bottom edges of the pastry dough. Lightly sprinkle with salt and pepper.
Next add a layer of rutabagas and sprinkle with salt and pepper.
Add a layer of beef followed by the onions and sprinkle with salt and pepper.
Lay a couple of pats of butter on top of the beef and sprinkle a little flour over the filling.
Wet the tips of your fingers and lightly moisten the edges of the pastry dough.
For the remaining steps work gently so that the filling doesn’t puncture through the dough. If this happens, patch up the hole with some of the scrap pieces of pastry dough. Bring the sides up and seal the pasty down the middle.
Turn the pasty onto its side and crimp/braid the edges in traditional Cornish fashion. This is the challenging part of making traditional Cornish pasties and takes some practice. There are some YouTube videos you can look up that show how to do this.
Assemble the remaining pasties and lay them on a lined baking sheet.
Use a sharp knife to cut a slit in the center of each pasty.
Lightly brush each pasty with the beaten egg mixture.
Bake the Cornish pasties on the middle rack for 40-50 minutes until golden in color. Remove from the oven and let them sit for about 10 minutes (they will be very hot inside) before eating.
The homemade Cornish pasties can be reheated in the oven or in microwave, but for a crispy crust I highly recommend reheating them in the oven.
Can Cornish Pasties Be Frozen?
Yes. The shortcrust pastry holds up well to freezing and thawing and the filling has little liquid which means the pasties won’t get soggy. You can freeze them either baked or unbaked, whichever you prefer. Wrap each pasty individually in plastic wrap and then store the wrapped pasties in a heavy-duty freezer bag.
If you’re freezing them unbaked it’s best to cook them while frozen – don’t thaw them first. Baking time will take roughly 15-20 minutes longer.
If you’re freezing them already fully baked and cooled then you can simply reheat them in the oven (for a crispier crust) or in the microwave and you have a quick, ready-to-go meal.
Serving Recommendations
Cornish pasties are typically eaten on their own as a complete and filling meal, but if you’d like to round out the meal or are making smaller pasties you can serve them with a side salad, mushy peas, baked beans and your choice of condiments like ketchup or Branston pickle (click links for my homemade recipes!).
Enjoy!
For more favorite British recipes try my:
- Fish and Chips
- Yorkshire Pudding
- Mushy Peas
- Bangers and Mash
- Scotch Eggs
- Crumpets
- Cornish Fairings
- Sticky Toffee Pudding
- Mince Pie
- Beef and Guinness Stew
- Spotted Dick
- Chelsea Buns
- Toad in the Hole
- Eccles Cakes
- Scottish hortbread
- Treacle Tart
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Authentic Cornish Pasty Recipe
Ingredients
For the Shortcrust Pastry:
- 3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour or bread flour (I make mine with all-purpose flour)
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 5 ounces unsalted butter , very cold, diced
- 5 ounces lard , very cold (can substitute butter but lard makes the flakiest crust)
- How to Render Lard (click link to learn how to make it yourself. It's super easy and much cheaper than store-bought!)
- 2/3 cup ice cold water
For the Cornish Pasties:
- 1 pound beef skirt steak or sirloin , cut into small cubes
- 1 pound firm, waxy potato (e.g. Yukon Gold) , peeled and diced in 1/4 inch cubes, or thinly sliced according to preference (**starchy potatoes will disintegrate and turn mushy so be sure to use a firm, waxy potato that will hold its shape)
- 8 ounces rutabaga , peeled and diced in 1/4 inch cubes, or thinly sliced according to preference
- 7 ounces yellow onion , chopped
- salt and pepper to taste
- unsalted butter (for cutting in slices to lay inside the pasties)
- all-purpose flour (for sprinkling inside the pasties)
- 1 large egg , lightly beaten
Instructions
- To Make the Shortcrust Pastry: Place the flour and salt in a food processor and pulse a few times until combined. Add the cold butter and lard and pulse a few more times until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Add the water a little at a time, pulsing between additions, until the mixture begins to come together. DO NOT over-mix the dough or the pastry crust will be tough and won't be flaky. Form the dough into a ball, wrap in plastic wrap, and refrigerate for at least 3 hours before using (this is crucial). (Can be refrigerated for a few days or frozen for up to 3 months.)
- To Make the Cornish Pasties: Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.Cut it into 6 equal pieces (rolling the dough into a log and then cutting makes this easier). Wrap and keep the other 5 pieces chilled in the fridge while you're working on one at a time. Roll the dough out on a lightly floured work surface to a 8 inch circle that's about 1/8 inch thick. You can use an 8-inch plate as your guide and cut the dough around it to form your circle.
- Layer the filling (see note at end): Put layer of potatoes down the center of the pastry circle, leaving about 3/4 inch space on the top and bottom edges of the pastry dough. Lightly sprinkle with salt and pepper. Next add a layer of rutabagas, onions and finally the beef, adding a light sprinkling of salt and pepper between each layer. Lay a couple pats of butter on top of the beef and sprinkle a little flour over the filling.
- Wet the tips of your fingers and lightly moisten the edges of the pastry dough. For this next part work gently so that the filling doesn't puncture through the dough. If this happens, patch up the hole with some of the scrap pieces of pastry dough. Bring the sides up and seal the pasty down the middle. Turn the pasty onto its side and crimp the edges in traditional Cornish fashion (see blog post pictures as a visual).
- Assemble the remaining pasties and lay them on a lined baking sheet. Use a sharp knife to cut a slit in the center of each pasty. Lightly brush each pasty with the beaten egg mixture.
- Bake the Cornish pasties on the middle rack for 40-50 minutes until golden in color. Remove from the oven and let them sit for about 10 minutes (they will be very hot inside) before eating. They can be reheated in the oven (recommended for a crispier crust) or microwave. NOTE: Depending on how full you stuff the pasties you may have leftover filling. No worries, just fry it up together or add it to soup and enjoy it as a separate meal.
Nutrition
Originally published on The Daring Gourmet January 22, 2020
Hi, I’m Kimberly Killebrew and welcome to Daring Gourmet where you'll find delicious originals, revitalized classics, and simply downright good eats from around the world! Originally from Germany, later raised in England, world-traveled, and now living in the U.S., from my globally-influenced kitchen I invite you to tour the world through your taste buds!
The photo shows what appears to be cubed carrots. Did carrots get skipped in the recipe? Did you take the photo? I think I’ll add a carrot.
Hi John, yes, I did take the photos. Those aren’t carrots, they’re rutabagas/swedes.
Looks good and probably tastes so. A small observation, MOST pasties are made with sliced potato & swede (Cornwall = “turnip”) rather than cubed as you show. This serves two functions, firstly, the thinner sliced cook through faster, but more importantly, when eating them from the hand, it’s far less likely for the filling to topple out between bites. The beef too, better sliced than “chunked”, which is easier for skirt as it tends to pull apart easily.
As to reheating the next day, we find it best to give a minute in the microwave then finish in the oven (not the other way round) but they never taste as good as straight from the oven.
This looks pretty authentic and I’m going to try incorporating most of it. My Cornish grandmother made pasties for a living in Butte, Montana, for the miners in the copper mines there. She would babysit me in the afternoons of Kindergarten and would let me make a tiny pasty with only dough inside (and sprinkled with sugar). I never learned her shortcrust recipe; I think it used lard, so I lazily have used premade pie dough which I won’t do anymore. One thing I think she did, though, was slice the potatoes rather than dice them, so that they wouldn’t poke through the dough. Just a thought. She also never used rutabagas or swede, most likely because they weren’t available in Butte at the time. Some people substituted carrots but she never did that. My mother always used a combination of ketchup and worstershire sauce as a dipping sauce but some people made actual gravy. Anyway, thanks for the recipe; it was fun to read that little bit about how the miners would hold the pasty with the edges of the crust because of the dirt on their hands. I had read this before and find it very ingenious.
This type of Pasty with the cubed veggies is the type the Finnish community made for the miners in Upper Peninsula Michigan (USA). In the 1990’s I was taught how to make them from my then Finnish mother in law (now x, divorced). After all that hard work, I found they were disappointingly bland. So my next batch, I added lots of spices in the Italian spice profile, like oregano, rosemary, sage, thyme, etc. My mother in law said my spiced pasties were the best pasties she had ever eaten. Keep in mind, because they are so bland, feel free to spice them up and make them into your own thing, and give them your own name so people aren’t comparing them to what they think is the original. Like add curry spices for an Indian twist, or za’atar for a Lebanese inspiration, or chili spices for a Latino cuisine flavor profile, etc.
The Cornish also made their way through the U.P., and may have left their recipe behind. The Finnish did, indeed, have their own recipe but I wonder if it’s a combo of both?? Interesting history up there as the Irish also went through the U.P. and many of those (and the Cornish) miners ended up in Butte, Montana, as the copper there hit an all-time high at the turn of the last century. I’m mostly Irish with a little Cornish from one of my grandmothers but the Irish always called the Cornish “Cousin Jacks” because their cultures were both Celtic in origin. It would make a great movie!
Love to read about your grandma making them in Butte .my parents grew up in Butte. my mother father was from Cornwall was a manager of one of mines. my dads father was a miner and apparently my grandmother made pasties for his lunches. i was told the story of their origin when i was very young. my mother made pasties for our family-always a special treat. her crust was the best. they are my daughter favorite and i make them whenever she comes home to visit. i however use the Pillsbury ready made pie crusts. i know its not the same but for us it works. on vacations to Butte we would always go to Joe’s pastie shop and it was always a special treat.
Delicious! Works exactly as written. For my own audience, I make an all-butter crust. With this kind, I found that more ice water was needed to make the dough cohere, and a shorter refrigerator chill (about an hour) left it easier to roll.
Wonderful! Thank you so much for the feedback and tips, Leigh!
Not a genuine Cornish pasty , even famous cooks get it wrong , the vegetables must be thinly sliced not diced and actually too much meat . The crimping should be done with the pasty lying flat from “ behind”.
As an 84 year old Cornishman who has enjoyed a lifetime of my grandmother’s my mother’s pasties I know the traditional pasty . Only lard was used for pastry and topping the vent. The diced one does not taste as nice . However looks great and no doubt delicious.
My Grandmother was from Cornwell (Benallick) and we were taught to grate the potato and turnip (we didn’t get Swedes those days in SA). We also didn’t put butter inside the pasty but I’m going to do that next time as they can be dry (we would always add a bit of fat off the meat inside each pasty).
Yes! My Cornish grandmother (who was also a Thomas and whose father was from Red Ruth) made pasties for a living and always sliced the veggies and always used lard. Do your pasties include rutabagas because my grandma never used them (could be because we lived in Butte, Montana, and they weren’t available there at the time)?
The confusion over rutabagas (UK = Swede), sometimes is due to the traditional recipes specifying turnips (which is what rutabagas were called in Cornwall). And as to the observations on lard not butter, indeed, traditionally they would not have been that “extravagant”, but for sure butter does make them taste better :)