The Cornish Pasty |
On an American TV show
The Cornish Pasty has received an email from the USA that reported a 1964 TV show,
repeated Aug. 2009, where pasties with "afters" were
described! They were known in America and yet they seem to have been mostly forgotten
in Cornwall .....
Hi. My name is Linda Butcher and I currently live in the USA. I
don't remember "afters" being in pasties but this subject actually
came up last night BEFORE I stumbled across your website. I called my
mum (born in 1943) last night to see if she'd ever heard of pasties
containing "afters" because I had just watched an old American
television show called The Andy Griffith Show. It was an episode from
1964 and there was an Englishman on the show who made "Cornish
pasties" for Sheriff Andy and his sidekick, Barney Fife. When Sheriff
Andy asked "what is a Cornish pasty?", the Englishman said it was meat
& potatoes on one side, and PLUM PUDDING on the other. I had never
heard of such a thing, so I rang my mum and she hadn't either. Then
I looked on the internet today and found your website...ha ha!
So....to make a long story short, someone in 1964 American television
knew that some Cornish pasties contained "afters"!
Linda Butcher
Dayton, Ohio
Originally from Braintree, Essex
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Since receiving Linda's email, I have found .....
The Andy
Griffith Show is on IMDb - The Internet Movies Database. This link gives
the storylines of each episode of the show but I could find no mention of
"pasties" - that must have been subsidiary to the main story of the
show. There are more details of the series on Wikipedia as
The
Andy Griffith Show.
http://en.allexperts.com has mention of the episode with the English pasty, possibly based on
the Bedfordshire Clanger (itself described erroneously as a Cornish Pasty).
Also, a review of a book here: Mayberry101:
Behind the Scenes of a TV Classic - Google Books Result), page 334,
mentions the Cornish pasty - that is good enough for me! (NB - in parts, it
is referred to as a "Cornish pastry" and as "high tea").
Further, more detail, text from the book Mayberry101: Behind the Scenes of a TV Classic says .....
" As Aunt Bee is walking towards the door, Malcolm enters with a little "high tea", He has prepared Cornish pasty. After listening to Andy and Barney's enthusiastic, remarks about the lunch, Aunt Bee says, "You boys won't be satisfied with tuna-fish sandwiches anymore, will you?"
Cornish pastry was not my first choice for the main dish Malcolm serves Andy and Barney," says Bernard. "At one script conference, I was asked by Harvey for a typical English dish. I suggested spotted dick, but Harvey didn't think a British dish called spotted dick was appropriate for TAGS, so I disappointedly suggested Cornish pastry. By the way, I must say the prop man did a nice job of it - meat and potatoes in one end, plum pudding in the other".
Reproduced with permission from John F. Blair, Publisher
I also found the episode was entitled "The Return of Malcolm Merriweather" (Episode 124 in production, Episode 123 broadcast - from Wikipedia), first broadcast 20th April 1964 - this was Season 4 Episode 28.
Acknowledgements: Many,
many thanks to Linda for sending the email above, I am very
grateful for the information and for her giving permission to
use it on this web page.
Also, grateful thanks to Caroline Sakowski for permission to use the extract
of text from the book Mayberry101: Behind the Scenes of a TV Classic
published by
John F. Blair,
Publisher.
Once again, The Cornish Pasty brings you the facts .....