The Fool's Favourite Mince Pies

They're a classic culinary component of the festive season -- but which retailer's mince pies will win our Foolish taste test?

According to that fount of all knowledge, Wikipedia, mince pies have been a feature of the British festive season since the middle ages. At one point, they were pastry cases filled with liver, hard boiled eggs and ginger, as well as dried fruit. Eurgh!

Thankfully, mince pies are now the sweet, non-liver-based treats many people enjoy at this time of year. I like mine served with a blanket, a good book and a strong cuppa.

The credit munch

But when it comes to buying mince pies, how much should we be spending?

As I recently wrote in this food-themed article, many Brits say they won't sacrifice flavour for frugality over the Christmas period -- even though we're heading into a recession.

Pie prices

But as any Fool knows, higher prices don't always mean tastier products. Likewise, achieving value for money is about more than finding the cheapest choice: it means finding the best product available for a price you can afford.

When I suggested running a mince pie taste test at Fool HQ, I was met with scores of suggestions -- and a flurry of strong opinions on what makes the perfect pie.

In the end, we decided to scoff a range of pies from eight major retailers, in the hope that we'd find a Foolish favourite.

What we did

Firstly, we decided we'd taste test each retailer's `bog standard' mince pies, so long as they were available. Packs of six were preferred, though packs of 12 were purchased when these couldn't be found.

Somerfield was the only store where ordinary mince pies weren't on the shelves -- so we settled for its `Best Ever' version. (If you're wondering whether that skewed the results, just wait and see!)

Secondly, I decided that giving every taste tester a whopping eight mince pies, or half pies, or even bits of pies, was a recipe for disaster. At the very least, it would have been the road to a nasty stomach ache.

Resisting the protests of Ed the Editor -- who insisted that everyone should try a whole pie -- I split my volunteers into two teams. Then, I asked them to try half portions of four different mince pies.

As they were munching, all testers filled in my Mince Pie Feedback Form. Testers rated their pies on the quality of the pastry, the flavour of the filling and the overall eating experience, to give a total mark out of 30. Thus, each pie could achieve a total of 120 points in round one.

Round One

As you can see, the pies tested by Team 1 were widely preferred to those tested by Team 2. The mince pies from Morrisons, at 19.8p each, were the most expensive in the Team 1 category -- but won a convincing victory over their slightly cheaper Waitrose rivals.

Team 2's results were, in my view, surprisingly poor. The mince pies from M&S -- the most expensive tasted by either team -- achieved the lowest score in their category, and indeed in the whole experiment!

Meanwhile, Somerfield's boozy `Best Ever' pies were also pipped to the post by the standard Deep Mince Pies from Sainsbury's.

Round two: the winner!

Now it was time to see which of the winning pies from each category in round one would be preferred by my final four taste testers.

Here are the results, in detail:

Again, Morrisons' mince pies trounced the competition. They won the most points in all three tasting categories, beating the Sainsbury's pies by a massive 18 point margin -- and winning the title of Foolish Favourite.

Interestingly, mince pies from Sainsbury's and Morrisons cost exactly the same: £1.19 for a pack of six. It just goes to show that price isn't always the best indicator of quality.

Key findings

Crucially, I found that the cost of the mince pies scoffed throughout our taste test bore little correlation to their perceived quality.

The two priciest pies tested, from M&S and Somerfield, proved the least popular. Meanwhile, mince pies from budget-friendly retailers Lidl and Asda -- the cheapest tasted by my volunteers -- earned fourth and fifth places overall in round one.

Waitrose's mince pies deserve an honourable mention for their excellent round one performance. Unfortunately ineligible for round two after falling foul of the knockout stage, they nevertheless achieved the second highest score in the competition. Thus, I think they should win a respectable third place overall.

Finally, it's worth pointing out that not all Fools felt the same way about each pie. Some preferred flaky pastry, others a crunchy outer texture; some enjoyed a super-sweet filling, while others liked their mincemeat spicier. So, perhaps no mince pie will please everyone.

(Oh, and one clever person pointed out I should have made a homemade batch of pies to taste test, too. Clearly, they've never tried anything I've baked.)

Hap-pie Christmas!*

Whichever mince pies you choose to chomp on this Christmas, enjoy them!

And if you have further foodie feedback for other readers, please post your comments in the space below.

*I know. It's terrible. I just couldn't resist.

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