The Pasties of Cornwall and the ‘Cornish Pasty’

Abstract

In 2011, the EEC ruled that among all the counties that had made this new form of meat pasty, only Cornwall could sell it by its authentic name. This gave a totally invented and unwarranted trading advantage to Cornish companies, to the great detriment of others who had equal rights to the use of the name. The following paper explores the history of the pasties of England, and questions the present policy of granting protected status to ubiquitous products solely on the basis of a regional name.