The end of pies

It is xmas eve so the time has come to finish off the job I started many weeks ago, and declare the overall winner of the great mince pie evaluation. Hopefully it is not too late for you all to rush out and purchase the champion, so as to have a stock in readiness for xmas tomorrow. But before I move on to the formalities, there is time for one last heat! Yes I have continued to eat and rate mince pies right up to today, giving more time for all contenders to get a fair chance at minced greatness.

There are three pies in this round: one from Borough market in London (the name of the stall escapes me I'm afraid), one from Reeve's the baker in Winchester, and a Waitrose mini star mince pie. All were enjoyed accompanied by a cup of tea.

I accidentally over cooked the Borough market pie, so it was slightly more than golden brown - burnt brown is a good description. Nevertheless I crunched my way through all of it, and crunchy it indeed was. There was a very high pastry to filling ratio, which some may like and others may not, whilst I sit on the fence. The filling had definite red tinge to it, cranberries I postulated. It was very sweet.

Slightly scorched

The other two pies went head to head in the traditional format of the evaluation. Mainly so that I could take this photo:

Reeve's and Waitrose. 

Big and small, satanist and Jewish (maybe I am reading too much into the number of points on the stars). Anyway I ate both of them, which was a challenge because the Reeve's pie was massive. Waitrose was diminutive in size and in taste - the pastry was bland, the filling sweet and nothing special, but it did have very large juicy sultanas in. Though it was better than the previous Waitrose pie I ate, because it wasn't seeped in booze and didn't contain cherries. The Reeve's pie was on the other hand delicious. Very short crunchy pastry, as to be expected from bakery produced as opposed to supermarket produced. Brown around the edges, but with a dusting of caster sugar on top giving a white tint too. The ratio of pastry to filling was spot on, the issue was that there was simply too much of both of them! There was a lovely citrus edge to the mincemeat, and it was not overpoweringly sweet.

So the winner of this final round is clear - Reeve's the baker. I believe that it is in cities/towns other than Winchester (possibly including Romsey), so it is not quite as hard to get as you may think at first.

On now to 'the end of pies' that the title of this post promises. I had hoped to have some kind of grand tasting finale, involving a selection of my favourites so far, and maybe even blindfolds to make it a more reliable study. This has unfortunately not come to pass, and given that there are precious few hours until xmas day, there is no chance of sorting this out in time. Therefore I am simply going to pick one and award it the honour of winner of the mince pie evaluation.

Lets start by considering the pies in two classes. First: those available from major supermarkets. I wasn't terribly impressed by many of these. Mr Kipling, Sainsbury's, Tesco's, Waitrose - major household names, but in out of their depth in the mince pie market. The only one that had the winning combination of good pastry and good filling (and lets face it, that is a pretty basic requirement for a nice mince pie) was M&S. Not the fancy luxury ones with oodles of booze, but the standard ones that come in a red box. Secondly I might group together those that came from the more esoteric outlets; that is smaller bakeries. These have the disadvantage that not many mince pie aficionados will be able to access them. But they do have the advantage that on the whole they were tastier. Of these I was most impressed by "Ye olde bakery" in Herne Hill.

Because we live in the real world, and not in some mumbo-jumbo communist claptrap universe where all pies are equal, there can be only one winner. One pie which has conquered all others on the twin fronts of pastry and mincemeat. A pie that can hold its own, whether eaten hot or cold, with tea or wine, as a snack or for breakfast - whatever the setting or occasion, a pie that satisfies deeply. This pie is from "Ye olde bakery". I hope that more people can swing by and sample it.

Merry xmas!