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This is the text of Dorothy Hodgson talking about how pasties used to be kept warm, recorded June 27, 1998 in Washington, D.C. 

The wives would make individual pasties. They would cook these … the miners, their husbands, their brothers, would take them with them down into the mine. When they were warm out of the oven, the women would wrap them in paper and then in cloth. Sometimes the men would have on bib overalls, and they would tuck the pastry in between their bib overalls and the shirt, and that would also help to keep the pasty warm. Later on, they finally came up with a metal box that would hold the pasty. They would put hot water on the bottom, then there was a shelf, that they set the pasty on, close it up tight and the hot water kept the pasty warm. Then later on, when they finally made warming ovens at the top of the mines for the miners, the wives would put the men’s initial on the pastry crust, so the men would be sure to get their own pasty. Because each family, each group, made them a little bit differently. They did add rutabagas, some people added turnips, and nowadays, some people even add carrots to their pasties.

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