The word ‘pasty’ can be found in a number of places in the UK referring to pastry covered usually savoury foods. The Cornish pasty is distinctive because of its shape and possible deadliness – either as a thrown weapon or as an unrivalled calorie delivery package.

For 4 pasties.

500g strong bread flour – you can use plain but the gluten in bread flour makes for a more elastic dough
120g white fat – vegetable or lard
25g margarine or if you’re feeling flash – butter
5g salt
175 ml cold water

Use your fingers to mix the fat into the flour until it looks like breadcrumbs.

Slowly add the water and combine the mixture, eithe by hand or in a food processor until the dough comes together.

Refrigerate for 2-3 hours to let the pastry rest before rolling it out.

Now remember the beef has to be skirt, no other cut and certainly not minced.

You are allowed potato, turnip (yellow swede) and onion as well as the meat. The pasty at the top of the page looks suspiciously like there may be carrot in it – which we know is the sign of the devil.

The only seasoning is salt and black pepper.

A good pasty will take about 50 minutes to 1 hour at about 200C.

And when you’ve mastered the basic pasty you can move on to the miracle of Cornish hydraulic engineering that left Isambard Kingdom Brunel speechless – a pasty with a savoury filling at one end and jam or apple at the other separated by a pastry bulkhead.

I thought we Yanks were exclusively entitled to the stupidest political fights.

2. Potatoes. Again out of Wikipedia. When, please, was the potato introduced to Europe? The answer is after Erasmus.

3. And finally, you chose to contradict AlexG55 with these defects in your arguments. That’s not something you’d do if you hated doing it. You’d be much more careful before you did.

Whilst the PGI rules state that a Cornish pasty must be a “D” shape, with crimping along the curve (i.e., side-crimped),[30] crimping is variable within Cornwall, with some advocating a side crimp while others maintain that a top crimp is more authentic.[13][39]

Some sources state that the difference between a Devon and Cornish pasty is that a Devon pasty has a top-crimp and is oval in shape, whereas the Cornish pasty is semicircular and side-crimped along the curve.[35] However, pasties with a top crimp have been made in Cornwall for generations,[41] yet those Cornish bakers who favour this method now find that they cannot legally call their pasties “Cornish”.[42]

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Actually, I think what happens is that if you buy a single baked good, it’s taxed because obviously going to be eaten as a meal.  Half a dozen or more are deemed to be something you’re buying as a grocery item and therefore not taxable. So, if you go to Tim’s and get 5 doughnuts, they get taxed, and if you get 6, they aren’t.