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Pasties
Shullsburg, WI
Vocabulary
Authentic: (awe-THEN-tick) Genuine, accurate.
Coax: (sounds like, COKES) To persuade.
Ethnic heritage: Traditions and customs of people that are from the same cultural background.
Ethnicities: (sounds like, eth-NIH-ci-tees) Of a common culture or country.
Hearty: Filling, plentiful.
Industry: A business that produces a certain product.
Initials: (sounds like, ih-NIH-shuls) The first letters of a persons name. The initials for Dorothy Hodgson are D.H.
Knockers: The mischievous little people that Cornish miners believed lived in the mines.
Miner: Someone who works in a mine. A mine is an area of the earth rich in minerals, oil, salt, etc.
Pasties: (sounds like, PASS-teez) Turnovers with a pie-like crust that are filled with meat and potatoes.
Perfect: (sounds like, purr-FECT) To make perfect.
Regional culture: The customs, beliefs, social activities, and materials of a region.
Self-enclosed: When something is its own container.
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Journal Questions
 What
kinds of work do your family members perform? Describe a typical work-day lunch
for each person in your family.
Do
you know people who care about making good food? Do they try to use the perfect
ingredients, search for excellent flavors, make sure to cook the dish just
right, and love to see other people eat what they make?
Can
you think of something that’s associated with two or more cultures even though
it originated in one of them?
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Resources For Teachers
 Consider
a field trip to southwest Wisconsin to tour historic mining sites such as
The
Mining Museum in Platteville, The
Badger Mine and Museum in
Shullsburg, and the Cornish miners’ colony of Pendarvis
in Mineral Point. The brochure, “Shullsburg
Mining Region Tour,” available from 608/965-4401, will give additional
sites. Or tour the area without your students while getting some good exercise
through the Lead
Mine Heritage Bicycle Tour.
 “The Flavor of
Wisconsin” is
a lesson plan from the State Historical Society Office of School Services. It
features pasties among other Wisconsin traditional foods, all of which could be
made by a class.
Put
mining in southwest Wisconsin into context with the article, “Mining
in the Upper Midwest” from the Library of Congress.
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Resources For Students
There
are lots of pasty recipes on the web. Here are a few links: twelve pasty
recipes with variations, a recipe for Cornish-Finnish-Michigan Pasties,
and another eleven pasty
recipes mostly from Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.
Other places in the Upper Midwest with mining history also have strong links with pasties. The Upper
Peninsula of Michigan and the Iron Range of Minnesota are two such places. Here are two websites about pasties in those places:
- Joes Pasty
Shop in Ironwood, Michigan claims to be the first pasty shop in the UP, started in 1946.
- Grandma's Pasties has
two shops, one in Richfield and another in Minneapolis.
Read
the first chapter of North
to Iron Country by Janie Lynn Panagopoulos, a book for kids about mining
in the Iron Range. Only Chapter 1 is online. Go to your library to find the rest
of the book.
Do you know what calcite and pyrite look like? Minerals
of Shullsburg, WI Area shows photos of these and other minerals that were extracted from mines in
Shullsburg.
If you want to really research mining, go to KIDS
Report. Middle school students from Iron River, Michigan report on nine different web sites about mining.
Would you like to see pictures of
Cornwall, England, original home of the pasty? You can read about the history of the pasty in Cornwall
too.
Cornish-Americans, like many other ethnic groups, celebrate their heritage. Find out
what the Cornish American Heritage Society
does.
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Credits
Text written by Jamie Yuenger, edited by Anne Pryor.
Sources consulted include the Smithsonian Folklife Festival tape, “Wisconsin
Kitchen-Cornish Foods, Tape 4” (7/3/98), with the tape housed at the Wisconsin
Arts Board and the article, “The Cornish Pasty in Northern Michigan,” by
William G. Lockwood and Yvonne R. Lockwood, in Michigan Folklife Reader,
Michigan State University Press, 1998, pp. 359-73.
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