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Hello pie-man,

Where is the line drawn between a pie and a pasty? Setting aside the slightly strange 'steak bake' from Greggs the Bakers, the whole pie/pasty debate is rife at our office.

Paul

Hi Paul

Well, that’s a toughie. For starters we can concur that setting aside a ‘steak bake’ from Greggs is probably the right thing to do with it. Better still, set it aside in the immediate vicinity of a passing dog/cat/bin, light the touch paper and then retire, happy in the knowledge that it’s gone to a better place.

But back to the matter in hand, or strictly speaking, the matter in warm, grease-spotted paper bag. You say pie, I say pasty. Pasty. Pie. Pie. Pasty. Let’s call the whole thing off.

The simplistic answer would be to say a pie is round, a pasty is not. Mind, that would leave the Square Pie Company with an appalling identity crisis, and would throw the world of traybake pies into total chaos. On the other hand, our dictionary says a pie is “a baked dish of meat, fish, fruit, etc, usually with a top and base of pastry” and a pasty is “a pastry case with a sweet or savoury filling, baked without a dish to shape it”. But again, that leads to confusion and possibly mass hysteria when the general public realises that its beloved pork pie should probably be reclassified as a different species.

So, exactly what can we say about pies and pasties that we know to be universally true? A fruit pasty would be an abomination. A Cornish pie would be bewilderingly ordinary. You can build a stronger wall out of pies, and a more buoyant raft out of pasties.

There you have it.

Regards

pie-man