Pasties

Also called “Cornish pasties” or “Cousin Jack pasties,” pasties (pronounced PASS-tee or PAHS-tee) are beef-and-vegetable-filled pastries originally eaten by mine workers as a warm noontime meal. They were an ideal food for men working in deep, dark, damp mines. Pasties were brought to America in the mid-nineteenth century from Cornwall, England, by immigrant mine workers. At that time, though depleted tin mines in Cornwall were closing, new mines were opening in America: copper and iron mines in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, iron mines in northeastern Minnesota, and lead mines in southwest Wisconsin.