As the weather gets cooler and the days get shorter, I often find myself drawn to warm comfort foods that remind me of friends and family. In my house, this includes pasties.
As I savored the tender, golden crust and warm meat and vegetable fillings of a pasty recently, I began to reflect on the long history and strong cultural ties of the beloved dish.
The pasties we know and love here in the Northland have their closest roots in England, specifically, the tin mining region of Cornwall, although their origins can be traced all the way back to medieval English meat pies as early as the 13th century.
Pasties came to the U.S., particularly Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, with Cornish miners who immigrated in the 1840s. Soon after, Finnish miners arrived in the UP and adopted the pasty into their own food traditions. Later, Finnish miners introduced pasties to Minnesota’s Iron Range, where many immigrant groups readily adopted them. Read more…
