“So it’s a pasty?”

“No. A patty.”

“What’s it like?”

“It’s got meat in it and a pastry covering -“

“Like a pasty?”

“Yes but -“

“So it’s a pasty?”

“No – yes. Yes, it’s a pasty.”

The above is a variation of a conversation many black people will recognise as the ‘so what is a Patty?’ question. There are other common food questions we have to contend with: what is hardough bread? Curry goat? What’s curry goat?! As for the roti conversation that is an entire blog on its own!

For this blog I will stick to the patty conundrum. The Jamaican patty – other West Indies islands and regions make them but they are most readily associated with Jamaica – is, in the purest sense, a peppered minced beef filled, half moon, flaky pastry snack. It is not a pastie.

Available in larger supermarkets, with various fillings, the patty of today is not the patty of my or my peers childhoods. If you purchase a patty today, those that are massed produced for stores, it is very different from the patty of old. The present day, plastic wrapped, mass consumption patty of today is a pallid, beige-yellow, smooth pastried version, filled with a mass-pleasing mix of potato, onions and mildly peppered minced.

In my and many of my peers youth, a pattie was yellow. Corn starch yellow, filled to bursting with peppered beef and the pastry was messily flaky, breaking apart with every bite. If you know where to go, you can still find these patties of old. Already a substantial meal on its own, sometimes you could purchase a patty in a Coco bread bap, a dense white bread not dissimilar to hardough bread.

So if you are lucky enough to know where to get the old school patty or should come across them in a jaunt through Brixton market, buy one, eat it and savour it. You may not get the opportunity for very much longer.