The pasty is a single circle of pastry folded over its filling and sealed with a crimp. Cornish miners and sailors carried it to Australia, Mexico, the United States and elsewhere.
The word comes from the Old French paste, a pie baked without a dish. A charter of King John in 1208 required Great Yarmouth to send herrings baked in twenty-four pasties to the sheriffs of Norwich each year. The earliest reference from Devon or Cornwall is in Plymouth’s city records of 1509 or 1510. By the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries it was a working meal in Cornwall and west Devon.
On 20 July 2011 the European Commission entered “Cornish Pasty” in the register of protected geographical indications. Under the specification a Cornish pasty is shaped like a D and crimped on one side, never on top, and must be prepared in Cornwall, though it may be baked elsewhere. A top crimp and an oval shape are the traditional marks of the Devon pasty.