Cornish pasty
A Cornish pasty is a type of pie, originating in Cornwall. It is an oven-cooked pastry case containing a filling of diced meat (nowadays beef mince or steak), potato, onion and swede. It is semicircular in shape, caused by folding a circular pastry sheet over the filling. One edge is crimped to form a seal. In Devon, "Devon Pasties" are very similar but the crimp is at the top of the pasty rather than the side.
It is essentially a portable meal. Tradition claims that it was originally made as lunch for Cornish miners who were unable to return to the surface to eat. The story goes that, covered in dirt from head to foot, they could hold the pasty by the folded crust and eat the rest of the pasty without touching it, discarding the dirty pastry. The pastry they threw away was also supposed to appease the capricious spirits in the mines, the knockers, who otherwise might lead miners into danger. In such pasties commonly meat would be at one end and a fruit filling at the other, separated by a pastry partition. A related tradition holds that it is bad luck for fishermen to take them to sea.
Oggy is a slang term for a Cornish pasty, see Oggy Oggy Oggy.
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