Devon claims they invented the pasty
It’s an understatement to say that Cornish pasties are popular in Cornwall.
For my Cornish family, it’s a signature dish, something that’s been eaten for everything from a quick lunch to a sit down dinner for centuries.
And while you certainly can get pasties in Devon, there is nowhere near as much passion surrounding them here.
But recently, Visit Devon claimed to have receipts that pasties originated this side of the Tamar. Let’s dig into what they said and some thoughts!
Just a note: I live in Devon but have a long line of Cornish ancestors. I am inclined to side with Cornwall, but I want to be as impartial as possible and look at both arguments.
What are Cornish pasties?
Cornish pasties are a particular type of pasty, filled with diced beef, potato, swede and onion.
They secured EU Protected Geographical Indication (PGI) status in 2011.
This means that only pasties made in Cornwall, to a specific traditional recipe, can legally be called “Cornish pasties.” To qualify, they must include beef, potato, onion, and swede, be D-shaped, and crimped on one side. While the ingredients can come from outside Cornwall, the pasties themselves must be made within the Duchy.
To make it clear – Cornish pasties cannot come from Devon.
How Devon has claimed the first pasties
Evidence uncovered by historian Dr Todd Gray suggests the pasty might have first been baked, not in Cornwall, but across the Tamar in Devon.
“Did you know? The oldest Cornish pasty recipe originated from Devon! In 2006, historian Dr. Todd Gray discovered a document from Plymouth’s city records, dated 1509 or 1510, detailing expenses for making a venison pasty.
This suggests that pasties were being made in Devon over 200 years before the earliest known record in Cornwall from 1746.
Don’t tell our friends over the border 🤫”
— Visit Devon on Facebook
The document in question is part of the Audit Book and Receivers Accounts for the Borough of Plymouth. Within it, Dr Gray identified four lines referencing the cost of baking a venison pasty using meat from the Mount Edgcumbe estate (worth mentioning that the estate is in Cornwall!) — dated 1510. Cornwall’s earliest comparable reference doesn’t appear until 1746.
“This is one of Plymouth’s ancient 16th-century documents which has never been properly presented to the public,” he told The Observer back in 2006. “This is a great joy for me as an historian uncovering local history.”
Response in Cornwall
Naturally, the suggestion didn’t sit well in Cornwall. Author Les Merton, who penned The Official Encyclopaedia of the Cornish Pasty, argued that pasties in Cornwall go back “to the beginning of time.”
Angie Coombs from the Cornish Pasty Association said pasties were likely used across medieval Britain as an edible container — the pastry often discarded, with just the filling eaten.
My dad (a proud, passionate Cornish man), said “Proves nothing. The Cornish never needed to write down the recipe as we knew how to make them anyway.”
Which is true – I’m sure my grandmother or great-grandparents never wrote the recipe down – it was just passed through generations.
Plus, while it’s been claimed that Devon produced pasties “200 years” before the Cornish, this would have never happened in reality – Plymouth is just over the River Tamar, after all.
The popularisation of the Cornish pasty
Of course, it was Cornwall’s miners who popularised the pasty.
And, as mining communities moved abroad in the 18th and 19th centuries, the pasty went global — I very much enjoyed trying Mexican pastes in Real de Monte and Pachuca in Mexico! More about that here.
So, who invented the pasty?
I don’t know – and I don’t think anyone’s ever going to be sure.
What I am sure about is that, today, Cornish pasties are very important to Cornish people in a way that they aren’t to Devonians.
And it’s definitely NOT a Cornish pasty if it’s made anywhere east of Saltash…
