Is the Pasty Really Cornish?
The Food Programme
BBC
4.4 • 977 Ratings
🗓️ 8 March 2020
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In the week that Cornish people celebrated their Patron Saint St Piran, Dr Polly Russell & Sheila Dillon ask why the pasty remains an emblem of Cornishness for people around the world.
There would have been a time when pasties were eaten all over the UK, but the PGI protected Cornish pasty has persevered in Cornwall. Today the Cornish Pasty Association estimate that on it's own, production of Cornish pasties is worth around 20 per cent of the value of the county's food and drink industry.
In this programme we hear what the pasty means to people in Cornwall, and all over the world; Because when Cornish miners emigrated away from the UK in the 19th century, they took their pasties with them.
At 2020's World Pasty Championships, we meet pasty makers from as far as the USA, Argentina, Jamaica, and closer, from Kent, Sheffield and Bristol. We hear from Bridget Galsworthy de Estavillo, who has helped to reconnect Mexican paste (pasty) makers with their Cornish heritage in the mountain communities of Hidalgo. And we ask what the Cornish pasty says about a new generation's sense of regional/national identity.
Presented by Sheila Dillon. Produced in Bristol by Clare Salisbury.
Transcript
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| 0:50.0 | Good morning, I'm Jill Martin and I come from Dealing Kent. I'm Peter |
| 0:56.6 | Jacobson from Lands End Pasty Company in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Terry |
| 1:00.3 | O'Connor, originally from Malion, been all over the world. |
| 1:03.2 | An elk traditional, so it's all of the same ingredients as a traditional |
| 1:07.5 | cornish pastee but with elk instead of beef. |
| 1:09.5 | I used to be a grave deal, |
| 1:10.5 | and now I'm retired. Yeah, I won it in 2013 and again in 2014. I'm making wherever |
| 1:16.5 | I am, I just just, I make it lovely flavours. I'm in it this year to win it again. I'm Sheila Dylan and this is the food program, the place |
| 1:29.0 | for hungry minds and those are some of the competitors in 2020's World Pasty Championships. |
| 1:37.0 | They were held last weekend at the Eden Project near St Austen, Cornwall. |
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