There’s no doubt, in Yorkshire we like our pies and pasties. And this one, as food historian, Peter Brears, writes, ‘was a favourite around Horton-in-Ribblesdale’.  The recipe shows up in a Halifax recipe book of 1913 and again in ‘Manuscript notes on traditional life in Yorkshire collected by Henry Bedford in the 1930s & ’40s’, in the University of Leeds Brotherton Library (Ms 432/1-4).

But Apple and Onion Pasty can’t quite make its mind up whether it’s sweet or savoury.  My money is on savoury – and it’s delicious eaten warm with a salad. However, with this cold in one hand, and with a hunk of Wensleydale cheese in the other, you could cheerfully eat this for your pudding, too.

Ingredients

• Shortcrust pastry made in advance (suggest 10 oz/280g of flour to 5 oz/140g fat)
• 1 large onion, coarsely chopped
• 1 large cooking apple, peeled, core and chopped
• 1 oz (28g) butter
• 1 oz (28g) sugar

Method

1. Mix onion, apple, chopped butter and sugar together
2. Roll out pastry into rounds – you should get 5 or 6 decent sized pasties from this
3. Put a decent-sized scoop of the mixture onto the pastry rounds and pull the ends together to make your individual pasty
4. Brush with beaten egg and bake in a moderate to hot oven (400F/200C/gas mark 6) for approximately 30 minutes

Source: Peter Brears, ‘Traditional Food in Yorkshire’ (2014), p.203. Prospect Books