Cornish Pasty Association: cornishpastyassociation.co.uk/ This undated photo taken in an unidentified mine somewhere in Cornwall in the 19th century emphasizes the popularity of the pasty. Typically, the Cornish miner’s pasty was taken underground in a linen sack. In spite of popular claims, however, there is much historical evidence to refute the modern-day claim that a “genuine Cornish Pasty” must contain beef, turnips and potatoes. Historical documents demonstrate that pasties, both in U.S. mining districts, and in Cornwall itself, were stuffed with any variety of ingredients.

Although no known documentation exists to support it, the pasty was almost certainly introduced to the Lake Superior copper region sometime during the summer of 1844. That was the time the first Cornish-born miners entered the region.

The Lake Superior Copper Company (LSCCo) was organized on Feb. 22, 1844 with three trustees. Among them was De Garmo Jones, of Detroit. Jones was a politician. He had served several times as an alderman of of Detroit (1827, 1830, and 1838), was elected mayor in 1839, and also served as Adjutant-General of the state of Michigan in 1829 and as a state senator in 1840-1841.

In 1834, Jones was living in the northern reach of the Galena Lead Mining District, in what is today Lafayette County, Wisconsin. That year, Jones and a partner, J.P. Sheldon, purchased Gratiot Mills and its surrounding properties, in what became Lafayette County, Wisconsin, when the Gratiot family retired from lead mining and turned to farming.

Jones was most likely involved with the Lake Superior company because of his lead mining experience and his connection with lead mining people, such as the Gratiots. When the LSCCo first began operations in the Lake Superior district, the company’s agent was Charles Hempstead Gratiot, a son of Henry, the founder of the Gratiot Mills who, with his brother, was also among the earliest pioneers of the Wisconsin lead region. He and his brother founded Gratiot’s Grove, along with a mining and smelting company there in 1825. When Charles Gratiot arrived at Eagle Harbor in the summer of 1844 he came with about a dozen miners, Cornish immigrant miners he had recruited from the Mineral Point lead mining region of southwest Wisconsin Territory.

While it is not documented, it was Gratiot’s Cornish lead miners who almost certainly introduced the pasty; they were the first Cornishmen to enter the region. However, this raises questions, among them being what fillings were involved in making the pasty.

The Cornish Pasty Association’s website declares that there is only one way to make a “genuine” Cornish pasty.

“No meat other than beef, and no vegetables apart from those listed can be used in the filling,” the association declares. “There must be at least 12.5% beef and 25% vegetables in the whole pasty. All the ingredients must be uncooked when the pasty is assembled and then slowly baked to develop all that famous Cornish pasty taste and succulence.”

The ingredients referred to can only be “roughly” diced or minced beef; sliced or diced potato; Swede (turnip); onion’ and seasoning (mainly salt and pepper).

The Cornish Pasty Association (CPA), created in 1993 was, according to its website, originally created by a collective of Cornish pasty producers concerned about the number of products being sold across the country as ‘Cornish Pasties’ despite bearing no resemblance to “the real thing.”

The declaration that “no meat other than beef” is most likely an advertising gimmick. According to most historical sources on livestock production in Southwestern England, very little effort or capital was invested in beef production.

Cornish Study Resources, in fact, contradicts the CPA’s claim. The study resource includes an article, “The pasty in the 1800s,” which refers to a series of articles on the condition of the poor published in 1850 in the newspaper “Morning Chronicle,” The article, in part, states:

“…generally speaking the pasties consist of potatoes and bits of meat, more frequently salt pork, covered with a rather tough crust made of flour and sometimes of flour and barley meal mixed together. In the absence of the potato, the turnip constitutes one of the internal ingredients of the pasty … They are generally made for the labourer himself, his family contenting themselves with lighter and more frugal fare.'”

G.E. Fussell, in his 1948 scholarly article, “High Farming” in Southwestern England, 1840-1880, published in the Economic Geography, most farms were small and devoted to either sheep or dairy farming, with the latter being entirely devoted to the production of milk, butter and cheese.

The study of British agriculture, (although it is as interesting as its mining history) sadly, is far beyond the scope of our focus. There is sufficient historical evidence, however, to suggest that for the most part beef, when it was available, would have been priced beyond the means of working class Cornish miners.

Harva Hachten and Terese Allen, co-authors of the 2013 book “The Flavor of Wisconsin: An informal History of Food and Eating in the Badger State,” published by the Wisconsin Historical Society, wrote that the “Cornish housewife was just as resourceful in her new home as she had been in her old one. And in the old country, Cornish women had the reputation of baking whatever they had into a pasty.” Pasties made by the Cornish immigrant miners of the lead mining region of southwest Wisconsin, they stated, were filled with whatever was on hand: “meat and potatoes, plus greens, onions, carrots, or whatever.”

The question of fillings, therefore, with pasties in the lead mining and copper mining frontiers of the Old Northwest, as well as the mining districts in Cornwall, again, center around meat — and carrots. While pork is not considered an ingredient in Wisconsin pasties as it is the Copper Country, it could be suggested that the Cornish miners in the Lake Superior frontier substituted until beef became available once settlements, such as the Cliff Mine established commercial meat sales. Historical documents as well as archaeological excavations confirm the commercial sale of beef at Clifton, although it was very expensive to purchase.

In 1844, Methodist Minister and Missionary John H. Pitezel was sent to the mission in L’Anse. In1846 he was assigned additional responsibilities to serve as a “roving Commission” to establish religious worship among miners. He traveled up and down the Keweenaw Peninsula and was successful in establishing a church of 30 men who signed a total abstinence pledge at Cliff Mine, states the Clark Library of Central Michigan University.

He was next appointed to Eagle River Mission, another mining community. Cliff Mine Agent, Edward Jennings, provided them with a cabin and stove, and allowed them to charge provisions at the company store. Pitezel first preached there on November 27, 1846.

Pitezel later published a memoir, Lights and Shades of Missionary Life, recounting his years as a missionary. Throughout the 431-page memoir, fish is mentioned 36 times; pork is mentioned 11 times; but beef is not mentioned once. Venison was mentioned, however, along with the inclusion of potatoes and turnips having been raised from the mission’s garden. A meal of luxury consisted of bread, pork, potatoes, fish, coffee and tea.

At the Astor House, on shore of Copper Harbor in 1845, a good meal of baked trout, pork and beans, bread and butter, dried apple sauce, coffee, tea and sugar, could be purchased for 25 cents.

Neither beef nor pasties seem to have been evident on the early frontier. But if the Cornish Pasty Association’s assertion of the guidelines necessary to be a “genuine” Cornish pasty are true, the guidelines were undoubtedly written long after the Cornish arrived in the Wisconsin Lead district or the Lake Superior copper region.

Historical evidence offers no evidence that 19th century Cornish immigrant miners in the Old Northwest mining regions considered the pasty a cultural culinary icon. Rather, evidence strongly suggests that they viewed the pasty for its nutrient-providing ingredients, of which carrots and pork were considered fair game, wrapped in a dense, filling high-calorie crust that could sustain a large man throughout a labor intensive work shift.