Distinctly Montana Magazine

w w w . d i s t i n c t l y m o n t a n a . c o m 49 CREDIT THE ITALIANS FOR SHARING WITH THE WORLD THEIR PIZZA, PASTA, MARINARA. Thanks, Japan, for sushi, sake and mochi. And we owe a certain debt of gratitude to Cornwall, traditional home of the hum- ble, nutritious pasty. It's been estimated that Cornish miners extracted two million tons of tin by the early 19th century. The peninsula's mining industry con- tracted in the mid-1800s when competition from abroad and economic doldrums forced some 500,000 Cornish workers to seek employment elsewhere. The miners of the Cornish diaspora took pasties with them to the mines of South Africa, Australia, and Butte, America, giving folks in other corners of the world a taste for the savory preparation. Meanwhile, back in Cornwall, pasties remain popular despite the decline of the mining industry. The Cornish Pasty Association, formed in 2011 to protect the food's traditional recipes, ensures that any product labeled "Cornish pasty" must be made in Cornwall. Cornish Pasty Week, an annual event organized by the Pasty Association, features baking contests, with locals and tourists by the thousands enjoying the coun- ty's most famous food. WORD HISTORY: An English document dated 1296 mentions one "Simon le Pastymaker," and another from 1300 lists the contents of a table: "Bread and cheese, butter and milk, pasties and flans." So pasty has a long history in the English lan- guage. It comes ultimately from the Latin pasta, referring to dough or paste. This Latin term is the source of the related pastry, pâté, pastiche and patty. How to pronounce the word pasty? The Oxford English Dictionary suggests rhyming the first syllable with "blast." American English speakers seem a bit con- fused and embarrassed by the word, reluctant to pronounce it paste-ee, the name for the nipple-cover used by strip-teasers. I say pasty, you say oggie. In the Cor- nish dialect, oggie is the word for the food, and the locals still refer affec- tionately to their specialty this way. Oggie is thought to be a variation of the Cornish hoggan, meaning "pile, heap, or lump (of dough)." Another lexical morsel from the Land of the Pasty: the seaside resort of Penzance is situated on the southeast coast of Cornwall. It is the same town featured in Gilbert and Sullivan's 1879 comic opera The Pirates of Penzance. PASTY with CHRYSTI THE WORDSMITH W I L D W E S T W I L D W E S T W O R D S W O R D S It might be noted that another major difference between the Irish pasty and the English version is that while the English one contains cubed beef, the Irish one con- tains sliced beef. In this way the Irish managed to distinguish themselves from their hated ancestral enemies, the English. Today there are many places to get a pasty in Butte. There's Joe's Pasty Shop, Nancy's Pasty Shop, Truzzolino Tamales, and Gamer's Cafe, which serves a famously massive version absolutely smothered in gravy. And of course, no survey of the modern Western American pasty could possibly exclude Wind's Pasties, made in Anaconda, Montana, but available in hundreds of locations through Montana, Washington, Idaho, and Oregon. We'll close with more pretty words from William A. Burke, the poet of the pasty: "That is all there is to it. Sounds simple— but in the hands of the inept—or if sufficient prayers are forgotten—the result might turn out to be but a soggy mess. Expertly handled, however, the finished product is something to cause the true gourmet to contemplate on thoughts, ethereal and otherworldly. A real pasty does those things to a human."

• Cover