Express & Star

"I wouldn't take that out of my fridge": The pies guys test festive favourite foods

The saccharine television adverts have started, the seductive festive music jangles from the speakers in the supermarket. The annual battle to relieve us of our cash in the run-up to Christmas has begun in earnest.

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Our tasting team prepared to get stuck into a Christmas pudding

Supermarket giants Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Asda, Waitrose, Morrison’s and Aldi, have spent millions on their festive advertising campaigns, and with good reason. Last year an estimated £4.2 billion was spent on food and drink over the Christmas period, and there is every likelihood that a similar amount will be spent this year. Mince pies and Christmas puddings are big business.

But which ones are the best? And is it really worth spending a little extra on a few special treats, or are the budget retailers just as good?

To find out, we assemble a crack team of taste testers from Dudmaston Hall in Quatt, near Bridgnorth. Marketing and communications officer Alexandra Blakeman, 28, from Shawbirch in Telford, conservation staff Lucy Cooper, 26 from Bewdley, and Julia White, 60, from Telford, kindly offered to stay back after work to put the festive fare through its paces. They are joined by business support worker Sarah Bailey, 46, from Albrighton, and 35-year-old Alexa Buffey, the senior house steward who lives on site.

Staff at Dudmaston Hall tested a range of festive fare

With firm opinions and discerning palates, the quintet sample five different product lines from each of the six supermarkets.

During a mammoth two-hour tasting session, each are invited to sample mince pies, Christmas puddings, festive sandwiches, Christmas cakes and stollen. The testers, who have no idea which supermarkets the products came from, are asked to give each a score out of 10, which are then combined to give a total score out of 50.

And there are some surprises. For a start, there were huge variations in price. As one might expect, Waitrose is by some margin the most expensive of the chains, the total basket of shopping weighing in at a hefty £31.30. But the big surprise comes at the other end of the scale. While Aldi, generally perceived as the budget chain, is certainly competitive at £16.26, it was only marginally cheaper than rivals Tesco and Morrisons. And it is by no means the cheapest, being comfortably undercut by Asda which has charged just £12.96 – well under half the price of Waitrose.

But given that Christmas comes just once a year, is it worth pushing the boat out?

Certainly not when it comes to mince pies. Asda’s pies, at just 90p, were the pick of our taste testers, getting a thumbs up from each of our fantastic five.

The team had some cutting comments as they tucked into the Christmas cakes

Biting into one, Sarah declares: “I really like that.”

“That’s quite melt in your mouth,” adds Alexandra.

If marks were awarded for the name on the box, Waitrose’s “Butter Enriched Shortcrust Mince Pies”, would surely be hot favourites. But when it came to the taste, the response is somewhat lukewarm.

“The pastry’s good,” says Lucy, hopefully, but her co-critics are less positive.

“It’s not outstanding,” chips in Sarah, with an air of disappointment.

“It’s fine,” says Alexandra, still not sounding entirely convinced. Yet despite the underwhelming comments, the £1.80 Waitrose mince pies pulled in a respectable score of 32 out of 50, way ahead of those from Morrisons, Aldi or Tesco.

The staff at Dudmaston Hall test the Christmas fare

When it came to Christmas puddings, the variations in price were particularly pronounced, ranging from £1.99 at Asda and £2 at Tesco, to £8.50 at Waitrose. In this case, it seems like going for the cheapest may well be false economy, with the Tesco pudding scoring a pitiful 17 out of 50, and the Asda notching an even lower score of just 16 measly points.

But while the Waitrose one scored a reasonably impressive 32, it was only one point ahead of the £3.15 offering from Aldi, and some way behind the £4 pudding from Sainsbury’s. More to the point, the Sainsbury’s pudding, which scored an impressive 40 out of 50 for taste, was nearly twice the size of the Waitrose one, weighing in at 900g (1.98lbs) compared to 480g (1.06lbs). The Sainsbury’s Christmas pud also scored the highest of all marks awarded during the taste test.

The growth of German-style Christmas markets in recent years has led to a surge in popularity of stollen, a traditional Teutonic festive fruit bread made with marzipan. And it is here that Waitrose excels, although it has to be said it took some digging out in the store’s confusing layout, with even the staff struggling to find it.

The team tuck into the Christmas cakes

Certainly, if the description on the box is anything to go by, it is definitely worth hunting down.

“With orange pieces, sultanas, golden glace cherries and a Belgian dark chocolate and marzipan centre, the cake is covered in an orange liqueur extract, sugar and butter coating, and decorated with hazelnuts and gold dusting,” says the flowery blurb on the Waitrose dark chocolate orange stollen wreath.

And notching up a score of 34 out of 50, it was not only the top-rated stollen on test, but also the most popular of all the Waitrose products tested.

“I would quite like that with a cup of tea,” says Alexandra. “It’s quite pretty as well.”

“It’s like a stollen panna cotta,” sighs Sarah.

Everybody agreed that the Waitrose stollen was a work of art

But while everybody agrees that it is the king of stollen, once more the purchase price raises a question mark about whether the judges would actually buy it. The second placed Asda stollen, which scored a creditable 30 out of 50, cost just £2 – compared to £9 for the Waitrose gourmet product. On the other hand, you did get three times as much stollen from Waitrose, so if you’ve the whole clan coming round then maybe it’s worth the extra outlay.

Lucy, though, prefers the Asda product anyway. “It’s light,” she says, “and I like the lighter stollen.”

There are tough words for the five stollen slices from Morrisons, which were given marks of two out of 10 from all five of the panel.

“It didn’t taste like anything,” says Lucy. Julia agrees. “No flavour,” she tuts.

Alexa also dislikes the cherry in the Sainsbury’s stollen, which she describes as ‘average’. She is similarly underwhelmed by Aldi’s version: “I like an almond flavour in a stollen, but that was more jam. I’m giving that a two.”

The Tesco stollen also attracts some acid comments. For Alexa, things escalate fast.

A slice of stollen

“It’s a bit...” she says, grasping for the right word to summarise her opinion, “disgusting.” Come on Alexa, tell us what you really think. Lucy’s not defending it either. “I didn’t like it at all,” she says.

But if our critics have been damning in their criticism of Tesco’s stollen, then they are positively angry about Asda’s Christmas cake. At least one comment that tumbles across the table is not repeatable in a family newspaper.

“It’s like eating a digestive,” howls Lucy, before elaborating in slightly stronger terms.

“I wouldn’t take that out of my fridge,” says Alexandra. Even so, she is the most generous of the judges, giving the cake two out of 10. Nobody else can bear to part with more than one point. The total of six out of 50 was the lowest of all the products tested. At £4, it is not even cheap.

The low marks all round led the judges to conclude that they probably don’t really like Christmas cake very much. Waitrose and Sainsbury’s tied for first place on 21 marks out of 50 each, although the slightly lower price of the Waitrose cake means it gives you more points-per-pound.

The Christmas sandwiches were also low scorers, with the £2.25 Morrisons butties getting the highest mark of 34 out of 50, while the £3.20 Waitrose turkey and bacon came bottom of the heap at 13.

None of the sandwiches proved especially popular

So, after sampling 30 different examples of festive produce, where should we go for our shopping?

Sainsbury’s came out the clear winner, scoring 146 marks out of 250, showing that our testers really could taste the difference. Waitrose, generally perceived as the most upmarket of the big store chains, came second on 132 marks, although many would say it should score well given the higher prices.

The two cheapest retailers, Asda and Aldi, came joint third with a very creditable 117 points from our hard-to-please judges.

Using an unscientific ‘value for money index’ gained by dividing the overall scores by price, Asda topped the charts with nine points per £1 spent, followed by 7.2 points per £1 for Aldi. Sainsbury’s scored 6.3 points per £1, and Waitrose 4.2.

Morrisons, scoring 102 marks out of 250, and Tesco, on 91, will be disappointed to come bottom of the taste tests. They do not fare that well for value for money either, scoring 5.8 and 5.2 per £1 respectively.

While Tesco, Britain’s largest grocery chain, didn’t do badly in any single category, it did not excel in any of them either. Maybe a few slight tweaks could make all the difference.

As somebody once said, every little helps.