Greggs’ arrival is no threat to Cornwall’s real pasty makers

‘I see no reason to give any Cornish branch of Greggs my business,’ says one reader. Photograph: D and S Food Photography/Alamy

Re Fergus Muller’s article (Dear Greggs, I’m a pasty maker. Here is why you are not welcome here in Cornwall, 21 November), I’d like to tell him that his pasties are indeed magnificent, as are Rowe’s, Philps, Aunty May’s and most others. There is nothing to compare with sitting, looking at the sea or some other Cornish landscape, biting into the perfectly crimped crust of a freshly bought proper Cornish pasty, in a bag, oozing with exquisitely baked peppery beef, turnip, onion and tatie. Nothing.

I seek only to reassure Fergus. I am a Cornish woman, married to a Cornish man, and I regularly make pasties from a recipe handed down to me from generations of women from Newlyn and St Just. I would even call myself a connoisseur, certainly a purist.