Heston triumphs in mince pie test

The chef's puff pastry creations for Waitrose come top in our inaugural festive taste challenge.

For this year's results, go to The lovefood mince pie taste test 2012

Heston Blumenthal’s Waitrose puff pastry mince pies have triumphed in the inaugural lovefood mince pie taste test.

For this very unscientific, but very festive, test we took own-brand packs of pies from six supermarkets, a pack of Mr Kipling’s and a pack of Heston’s puff pastry creations.

Seven members of the team from both lovefood.com and our sister site lovemoney.com were recruited for the taste test. This was conducted blind, with each different pie only identified by a number.

The tasters were asked to rate each pie out of 10 for overall appearance, mincemeat filling taste and pastry quality. This meant the maximum overall score available was 210 points per pie.

You can watch some of the tasting here, courtesy of our sister site lovemoney.com

And here are the results of the taste test in full:

1.  Heston's Mince Pies with Pine Sugar Dusting – 145/210

2.  M&S Luxury All Butter Deep Filled Mince Pies – 130

3.  Sainsbury’s Deep Mince Pies – 123

4.  Mr Kipling Exceedingly Merry Mince Pies – 115

5.  Co-op Deep Filled Mince Pies – 114

6.  Lidl Snowy Lodge Deep Filled Mince Pies – 111

7.  Tesco Deep Filled Mince Pies – 101

8.  Asda Standard Mince Pies – 88

However, lovemoney.com took a different slant by looking at a taste/price ratio. To obtain this, they divided the taste score by the cost of an individual pie. Looking at it this way, Sainsbury’s came out on top and Heston finished bottom. At 55p a pie, Heston’s are over three times more expensive than Sainsbury’s. But are they three times as tasty?

Will you pay more for a really good mince pie? Or is a supermarket version satisfactory? Which variety is your favourite? Share your thoughts via the Comments box below.

More mince pie merriment

The marvellous history of mince pies
How to make mincemeat
Connie Allfrey's orange mince pie pastry