From Cornish pasties to Slovenian potica, food is a language that everyone understands

What we eat defines us as a nation but it also crosses borders and, like Esperanto, helps us communicate globally

Food is an international language: an Esperanto that we all speak pretty fluently, for in the end everyone has to eat. But dialect words are also involved, and sometimes these are a little harder to translate. Last month, in Slovenia, where I was running a writing workshop, I found myself having to explain not only the meaning of the word pasty, but also the various reasons why the appearance of such a thing in a story might be an indicator of social class or even of character. The author could have had Keith eat a sandwich," I said, sounding more confident than I felt. But he went for a pasty instead because he wants to reveal Keith's masculine needs to the reader. Basically, Keith is the kind of man who feels himself to be woefully deprived unless he has a hot lunch." (I know. Eat your heart out, FR Leavis.)

All cultures have portable dishes: in this sense, the pasty comes with an in-built universality, one my students grasped immediately (or at least they did once Google provided us with a picture). Then again, made properly, the Cornish pasty is also highly specific. Its recipe, as we know, is not to be messed with, and here's where things got trickier. Keith, the bloke in the book we were talking about, is an old-school, pedantic type, which may be another reason why his usual lunch appeals to him; he gets to pass judgment on it as well as eat it.