The now famous pasty came into existence towards the end of the eighteenth century. According to the St James’ Chronicle they were for the ‘lowest sort of people’ and comprised no more than ‘vegetables wrapped up in a black barley crust’. The pie is older fare than the pasty in Cornwall, but the pasty was found to be more convenient for the miners and farm labourers to take to work and eat at mid-day. In early times they rarely contained meat (indeed many families had meat no more than once or twice in three months) and were made primarily of turnip and potato. As time went on, they became more nourishing and sophisticated and endless variations of filling were devised. I particularly remember rabbit pasties, in which the ribs of the rabbit were used to hold out the pastry! Pasties can have sweet fillings too – apple and blackberry or jam – and they would then be served with sugar and cream.

Pasties do not feature greatly in Poldark fare; they were served at the Warleggans’ House with cakes and jellies, syllabubs and fruits, punch and wines and tea and coffee after the Lord Lieutenant’s Ball; see Demelza, Book Two, Chapter XI.

Family pasties always had the person’s initial on the pasty at the corner. One reason for this was that some liked a lot of onion, others none; some liked pepper and so on. One person I knew liked a ‘poor pasty’. That meant she did not want too much meat, but some really big pieces of fat. The corner with the initial was usually kept for tea-time.

In early summer we had pasties made entirely of new potatoes sliced finely, with salt and pepper, and when they were cooked we made a hole in the top and put a big dollop of cream in. Nobody thought of carbohydrates or cholesterol; the Cornish people were hard-working on the farms and in the mines and did not have to worry about such things.

At the local council school, which was in a wooded valley two miles from the village, the children would race out of the school yard at dinner-time and run up a small lane, each one clutching his or her pasty. Each one had a favourite branch in the scrub oaks which grew on the banks of the lane, the best place of course being the highest where one had the best view. There they would sit like a flock of starlings eating their pasties until the school bell clanged out to go back to the classrooms.