Citizens of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, who call themselves Yoopers, consider the pasty their own.
The pasty (say “pass-tee,” not “pay-stee”) began as a portable stew—meat and vegetables sealed inside a pastry crust—that Cornish miners in Northern Wisconsin and Michigan’s Upper Peninsula used to carry with them for lunch. It stayed warm, it could be heated on the end of a shovel, and its filling was thick enough that it did not require major knife-and-fork work. Long after the mines closed, the pasty remained a popular dish in the northland where families from Cornwall had settled. And although it has been eclipsed by fast food, the U.P. still is rich with pasty shops. Traditionally, pasties are filled with beef or beef and pork with chunks of potato, rutabaga, and onion, but today between Sault Ste. Marie and Ishpeming you will encounter gourmet pasties filled with steak, pizza pasties with pepperoni and mozzarella, Reuben pasties, chicken pasties, even vegetarian pasties for meat-phobes and breakfast pasties filled with eggs and sausage.