The great mince pie taste test

On Monday, I took part in a mince pie taste test. For anyone unfamiliar with English Christmas traditions, a mince pie is a small sweet treat made of shortcrust pastry filled with a jammy mix of dried fruit (raisins, sultanas, citrus peel and apple). This fruit filling is confusingly called ‘mincemeat’ because when the pies were first invented in medieval England, the filling actually contained meat as well as the dried fruit. I’m glad it no longer does.

The mince pie to British people is what Stollen, Vanillekipferl, Pepperkaker, Panettone, Polvorones or Melomakarona are to other Europeans: an absolute must at Christmas time. And because of this every supermarket sells mince pies - with varying degrees of quality. So, my friends from Monday Club (my working group at a pottery studio on Mondays) decided we should blind test them to work out which ones are really worth buying this Christmas.

We brought in mince pies from six different supermarkets, and we rated them on the following ten criteria:

1. Flavour

2. Fruit content

3. Generosity of filling

4. Pastry taste

5. Pastry texture

6. Overall experience

7. Mouth feel

8. Appearance

9. Aftertaste

10. Messiness level

It was really fun, but it was actually rather difficult and the result was surprising to many of us.

My tips for conducting a taste test

• Plan it well - how many items of food are you tasting and have you got enough for all the participants?

• Work out 10 taste criteria and then mark each item you are tasting on those criteria, giving them a mark between 1 and 10. This. makes the maths easier and you can easily work out the winner.

• Have a marking sheet ready for each participant.

• Cut the food you are judging into small bites and divide them so that everyone gets an equal portion - remember to keep one item whole so that the appearance can also be judged.

• Have a neutral drink like water to hand so that you can cleanse your palate between tasting.

• Go through the marking sheet by criterion rather than by mince pie (or other food item) - e.g. mark the flavour for all the mince pies, then move on to fruit content. This allows you to compare the pies more directly.

• Don't talk about your experience to the other participants during the tasting because you could inadvertently influence others.

If you’d like to conduct your own mince pie taste test, you can download our mince pie marking sheet (warning: you do need quite a large group of people, otherwise you will have to eat a LOT of many pies).

The winning mince pies

The winner was Waitrose (Made with Love) and the runner-up was Tesco's Finest.

Note: We were not paid by any of the supermarkets (nor did we get any free mince pies) to do this test - we did it purely for fun and to find the answer to our big question.