The Cornish Pasty Overseas

“Wherever in the world there’s a hole in the ground at the bottom of it you’ll find a Cornishman searching for metal,” said A.K. Hamilton Jenkin in his 1927 book The Cornish Miner. And wherever the miners went, they took with them their Cornish pasties – to the copper mines of South Australia; the diamond mines of South Africa; the silver and gold mines of America; and further afield to Mexico, Canada and Chile.

Over 100,000 Cornish miners, known as ‘Cousin Jacks’ and ‘Cousin Jennys’, are estimated to have left the county between 1860 and 1900. Two forces were driving this exodus: the demand for Cornish tin fell leaving formerly thriving mines standing idle; and the boom in other types of mining in the New World saw the Cornish miners’ expertise in hot demand.

Today, Cornish pasty shops can be found wherever the miners settled in numbers. In America, the Michigan town of Calumet holds an annual pasty festival, and the South Australian copper triangle of Kadina, Moonta and Wallaroo is still known as Little Cornwall.