Stargazy pie through the pastry top, appearing to gaze at the stars. The position of the fish allows the oil that is released during cooking to drain into the pie, adding a fuller flavour and ensuring the pie is moist. The celebrity chef Rick Stein suggested also poking the pilchards' tails through the pie crust to give the effect of leaping through water. In spite of the fact that the British Food Trust describes the dish as being fun as well as amusing to children, it has been listed in "Yuck! Disgusting things people eat", a lifestyle feature by the "New York
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