A word from Carmen about Cornish Pasties

As recipes go- especially from this era- this particular recipe or should I say paragraph/ pastiche, presents much more of a challenge than anticipated. The instructions were about as sparse/ vague as the ingredients. It is quite unusual in regard to recipe outlines to find ‘some’, ‘any’ and ‘little’ being used as measurements. This recipe relies heavily on the cooks instincts in the kitchen; which leaves some of us in a rather difficult position.

Having waded through a plethora of potential variants and discovered the exact pasty mixture which family and friends require, the cook is then faced with another variant- and yet another omission from the recipe. Timing. Timing for the average cook needs to be stated in the initial recipe as a foregrounding to later adaptation; however this book provides no such luxury. Know your oven well and the tendencies of pastry strengths or suffer a cracked tooth and a pasty that may be better suited as a door stopper. Thankfully, our Cornish pastry was still edible by the time we salvaged it from the cooker: and furthermore was very tasty.

Aside from the aforementioned omissions, the language of the recipe is simple and to-the-point. Its brevity narrows down the readership and suggests that the implied reader is an experienced cook with very little choice as to food stuffs.

As always it is necessary to take into account certain social factors. Following this it can certainly be seen here, that there was a readership during the First World War who were both rationed and inexperienced with this status. There are multiple implications in the choice of Lady Algernon Percy’s decision to use the reader’s inputs to compile a pastiche of recipes from reader to reader. The sense of overarching community would have hoped to inspire cooks. The generational separation from that of the current who were fighting is created with the use of ‘Grandmother’s’ in the title. Everybody is fond of childhood memories, and most especially of those unconcerned with warfare. The idyllic pre-war setting reminds readers of peace time and urges the cooks to reinforce their family links.

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