Last week, I learned two important things. They both happened as the result of a post I wrote about various errors, typographical and otherwise. I noted that the excellent Economist magazine dropped an “r” from the word “pastries,” inadvertently rendering it “pasties.”
Well, The Economist was not wrong but I sure was. Many readers informed me that a pasty (pl.: pasties) is a small Cornish pie often filled with meat and vegetables.
The other thing I learned is perhaps even more valuable. In the comments section of the pasties post, a reader named Petréa Mitchell informed me that “You’ve just encountered Muphry’s Law (no, not Murphy’s).” According to this site, Muphry’s law states that “if you write anything criticizing editing or proofreading, there will be a fault of some kind in what you have written.”
Now I know.
In other pasty news:
On a long family drive this weekend, we listened to most of the first Harry Potter book on tape. (Yes, Jim Dale is fantastic; I truly would listen to him read the phone book, at least the A’s.) And sure enough, as Harry takes the train to Hogwarts for the first time there is mention of a pumpkin pasty. Unless I had made my pasty snafu earlier, I doubt the word would have caught my ear. As it was, my wife and I laughed aloud, hard. Yet another case of confirmation bias, sort of.
Upon our return, we found that a mysterious box had arrived by Federal Express. It was the size of a hardcover book but not quite as heavy. Under the FedEx wrapping, here’s what the box looked like:
Hmm. I recently resubscribed to The Economist; perhaps they were sending me a little gift?
Well, yes and no. There was no note but inside lay a pasty:
I have to say, it didn’t look very tasty. Maybe it had spent too long in transit. Inside, it looked like this:
The meat was, I believe, chicken. As you can see, there was also evidence of pea, carrot, and potato. I assumed that if The Economist was good-natured enough to laugh off my wayward criticism, they weren’t going to poison the pasty. So I took a bite. Yum! While it’s probably not so smart to eat food that arrives quasi-anonymously in the mail, I took another bite and then a third. I look forward to my next U.K. trip so I can eat a native pasty. My sincere apologies to pasty eaters everywhere. Apologies also to The Economist, and thanks.
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Greetings from the UK!
That is indeed a pasty, and lovely foods they are too! Very popular snack in the UK, and are often eaten for lunch. So popular in fact, that there are almost always pasties on offer in bakeries in the UK and even a branded shop which is almost everywhere in the country called the West of Cornwall pasty Co. (http://www.westcornwallpasty.co.uk/)
They come in many flavours and traditionally, you used to have one half savoury and one have sweet, with a small piece of pastry inbetween. Then it could be a main meal and a pudding. Nowadays, we can eat them with many different flavours, with or without meat, in varying sizes.
The best places to get them in the UK are the south west, so head to Devon, Cornwall or Somerset for a good old fashioned pasty!
Totally agree with #3.
MK is right! Pasties are the native food of Michigan’s upper peninsula as well, since the region was settled by old-world miners who were used to pasties and, at any rate, needed something big and filling to get through the workdays – and something piping hot in the Michigan winters.
40-odd years ago, I conducted an international survey (for an advertiser, not for a magazine) to see which magazine, if any, the world-wide great and good really took notice of. The answer was the Economist first, the rest nowhere. Now you see why a survey today would show the same.
Pasties are also well-known in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Generally beef, with potatoes, carrots and sometimes rutabagas.
“incorrection” is a a linguist’s term for incorrectly correcting something that isn’t wrong.
I thought pasties were the little things that strippers wore in the olden days.
OK, but when do we get an article about the economics of nipple coverings? I’ve been tricked by this blog enough!
In seriousness, maybe there is something to the separation of resturant/strip club. For example, in Northern VA, there is “Crystal City Restaurant.” Technically a restaurant, they are famously not known for their food. It is, essentially, a strip club. The notable difference being that the women at CCR wear pasties, and no bare breast = not a strip club. There’s no mandatory drinks or cover charge, just food, drinks, and ladies.