A Short History of the National Pastry Reserve

A Short History of the National Pastry Reserve by Col. Clem Butterworth MBE (deceased), Warden of the King's Pasties (both Cornish and Devon) for The Worshipful Company of Bakers.

Originally written circa 1950

Re-translated from the Finnish 2005

Re-translators foreword:

Although the original article written by Mr Butterworth and published in the National Victuallers Gazette has sadly been lost to posterity, we were fortunate in finding a contemporary translation in the Finnish periodical Juusto Ilo. In retranslating back into the English I have abridged several in depth descriptions of pasties that would be unnecessary for a British reader, I have also removed a postscript arguing for the formation of a similar reserve in Finland.

There has been some discussion recently of releasing the National Pastry Reserve in order to relieve the pain of rationing, and it falls to me, as keeper of the reserve, to explain why this is unfortunately impossible.

The pastry reserve was created unconsciously over several centuries by Cornish tin miners. Since Roman times the miners took large Cornish Pasties down into the mines with them for their lunches, storing the pasties close to their bodies to keep both the pastie and the miner warm. The pastie was traditionally eaten held by the crimped crust and then the crust discarded to appease the spirits who might otherwise lead the miner into danger. Over the years these crusts gathered on the floor of the mines and, even where the tin is long exhausted, there they remain.

The problem with the pastry reserve is this, like much folklore the miners habit of discarding their pastie crusts was founded on good sense, when working in the mines arsenic would build up on their fingers and the pastry crusts they threw away could have been quite lethal. In fact it is this arsenic contamination which has preserved the reserve from vermin and decomposition over the centuries.

The reserve was founded, and the pastry beneath Cornwall formally nationalised, by the National Strategy For Subterranean Refuse act of 1798. At the time there was some consternation in Cornwall arguing that the pastry rightfully belonged to the miners and their descendants. One particularly fractious group of men broke in to the Probuswheal Mine in order to make a point of eating the pastry, but after two of them fell ill with arsenic poisoning the protests died down.

In 1814 a parliamentary commission estimated that there was no less than two million tons of pastry under Cornwall. A more sober minded survey in 1907 estimated there was only between fifty and sixty thousand tons.

Efforts have been ongoing since the nineteenth century to release the reserve. Most of these have focussed on the sublimation of the arsenic by heating, but none have so far been discovered that did not burn the pastry in the process, rendering it inedible. In 1817 Lord Carrik proposed that an animal be found that was immune to Arsenic and could be fed using the pastry reserve and farmed. The only suitable indigenous creature discovered was a particular species of woodlouse. Lord Carrik insisted that the woodlouses could be processed into an appetising paste but the idea continued to prove unpopular. These days it is obvious that, in any case, the arsenic would have remained within the food chain and a more scientific approach is necessary.

Fortunately Britain leads the world in pastry technology and great advances continue to be made in the fields of Shortcrust and Puff, many of our best pastry experts have returned from the war with experience of continental pastries such as Phyllo and Choux and will surely soon surpass the European bakers in these arts. [Re-translators note: The original Finnish translator takes the opportunity here to strongly dispute this claim] It seems impossible to me that we will not soon find some method of releasing the reserve, until then it remains a vital and well protected resource of Britain.