Cornish people an important element of the Cornish diet, but international commercial fishing was also well established by the 16th century, and tons of pilchards were exported from Cornwall to France, Italy and Spain every year. Stargazy pie is an occasional festive Cornish dish with the heads of fish standing on their tails, originally pilchards, piercing a pastry crust. The saffron bun, also known as the tea treat bun, is a sweet bread with its origins in Cornwall. With its comparatively small, rural population, major contribution by the Cornish to national sport in the United Kingdom has been limited. There are no
Tom Bawcock catch enough fish to feed the entire village. The entire catch (including seven types of fish) was baked into a pie, which had the fish heads poking through to prove that there were fish inside. Since the 1950s, the Tom Bawcock's Eve festival has been an annual event held on 23 December in Mousehole. The celebration and memorial to the efforts of Tom Bawcock sees the villagers parading a large stargazy pie during the evening with a procession of handmade lanterns, before eating the pie itself. An older feast, held by the fishermen towards the end of December, included a