Photo: David Johnson [1], CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
The pasty is a pastry folded around a filling of meat, potatoes, onion and, in the Upper Peninsula, usually rutabaga. Cornish miners brought the recipe to the copper and iron ranges in the 1800s.
It was a practical lunch. A pasty held its heat, could be carried down a mine shaft and filled a person up for a long shift. Finnish, Italian and other immigrant miners soon took it up as well.
From kitchen to counter
Over time the pasty moved from home kitchens to bakeries and dedicated pasty shops. In Marquette County, small shops sell them hot at lunch or frozen to take home. Many of the businesses are family run and have been in the same hands for decades.
Some sell by mail, shipping frozen pasties to former Yoopers living in other states.
Tourism
The pasty has become part of how the region sells itself to visitors. Signs along U.S. 41 advertise them, and tourists often treat one as a must-try stop.
Debates over the right recipe, ketchup or gravy, and whether carrots belong are part of the fun. Ask in any Marquette shop and you will get an opinion.
![David Johnson [1]](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cornish_pasty.jpeg){kind=link}