The Michigan Pasty
I tasted my first pasty 17 years ago while attending Michigan State University. One bright fall day, my neighbor Kathy (a Saute Ste. Marie, Michigan native) put a hot, freshly baked crescent of pastry into my hands and urged me to taste it. I bit into the tender crust, which released a heady fragrance of beef and vegetables, and slowly chewed. "What is this?" I demanded in between bites.
"A pasty. We make them all the time in the U.P. (Upper Peninsula for the uninitiated)," Kathy explained. I was hooked! Who who have thought a simple meat-and-vegetable-filled turnover would be so satisfying?
This modest pasty is a contribution from Cornwall, England, to the Upper Peninsula. It probably arrived in the mid-1840s with a group of Cornish immigrants who came to work in the U.P. iron and copper mines. Back in England, Cornish women created this sturdy little pastry-encased meal as a handy way of providing their miner husbands and sons with a hearty, convenient lunch that could withstand the rigors of the job. If the men wanted a hot lunch, they simply heated their pasties on shovels held over an open flame.
Early pasties had 3 levels of filling--the top was meat, the middle was a mixture of vegetables and the third was a fruit layer. Held like a sandwich, the average miner began at one end and ate his way through a balanced meal. In Cornwall today the pasty fillings are made from a variety of ingredients, including eggs and bacon, lamb and mint, meat and potatoes, or any leftovers that can be chopped and enveloped in pastry. In fact, it was said that "the devil never dared cross the Tamar River from Devonshire to Cornwall for fear of the Cornish women's habit of putting anything and everything into a pasty."
As other immigrant groups arrived in Michigan's Upper Peninsula to join their Cornish counterparts in the mines, they usually adapted the pasty to their own tastes. The Finnish had dishes--known as the piiraat or kukko--that were similar to the pasty. The ingredients for these turnovers (which could be as large as a loaf of bread or small enough to be hand held) included fish, vegetables and rice.
According to Yvonne R. Lockwood, folklife specialist at the MSU Museum, and William C. Lockwood, professor of anthropology at the University of Michigan, the changes in ingredients and condiments used for pasties were associated with specific ethnic groups. Rutabagas in the filling were attributed to the Cornish and carrots to the Finnish. Covering the pasty with gravy was a Cornish practice and buttermilk sauce was Finnish. I have no idea who decided to put ketchup on a pasty, although I learned that habit from my friend, Kathy, who's Native American.
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