My mince pie odyssey

[The Hallucinating Goose]

Every year I take on the task of trying as many different mince pies as possible and this year I thought I would keep you all informed of what I think of them.

[The Hallucinating Goose]

So yesterday I started my odyssey by trying two different varieties from Aldi.

I tried Aldi Deep Filled and Aldi Iced. I found the deep filled ones very sweet and very tasty. The iced ones I found were perhaps not filled quite enough, perhaps a little too moist as well and I found the icing to be very chewy.

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Rankings:

1. Aldi Deep Filled

2. Aldi Iced

[Padge]

I'll tell you what I think of mince pies, utterly disgusting excuse of a pie.

[HawkMan]

An average mince pie contains 28g of sugar plus high cholesterol content, iced ones even worse. If you value your teeth, steer well clear. If you must eat them, and I do occasionally,  go to a bakery,  Greggs or the like, homemade ones are a lot healthier.

[DavidM]

The only ones I buy near Christmas are M&S , but usually home made 

[The Hallucinating Goose]

11 minutes ago, HawkMan said:

An average mince pie contains 28g of sugar plus high cholesterol content, iced ones even worse. If you value your teeth, steer well clear. If you must eat them, and I do occasionally,  go to a bakery,  Greggs or the like, homemade ones are a lot healthier.

My teeth have already rotted away.

[Padge]

8 minutes ago, DavidM said:

The only ones I buy near Christmas are M&S , but usually home made 

The only ones my wife will eat.

[MattSantos]

Waitirose effort with a hint of lemon are exceptional. 

 

[The Hallucinating Goose]

Okay, I have tried a traditional mince pie from Thomas the Bakers, which is a Yorkshire chain of bakeries.

The pastry was sturdy and crumbled lovely as I bit into it and the filling wasn't so sweet that the sugar masked the flavour of the filling, you could actually taste the individual ingredients of the filling. Best so far.

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Ranking:

1. Thomas the Baker

2. Aldi Deep Filled

3. Aldi Iced

[CanaBull]

Would there be a waterfowl favourite homemade recipe available?

[Futtocks]

Traditionally, the "mincemeat" filling actually contained meat. Does anyone actually sell the traditional kind? I'd be fascinated to try one, whether I liked it or not.

[Stirlin]

6 hours ago, The Hallucinating Goose said:

Okay, I have tried a traditional mince pie from Thomas the Bakers, which is a Yorkshire chain of bakeries.

The pastry was sturdy and crumbled lovely as I bit into it and the filling wasn't so sweet that the sugar masked the flavour of the filling, you could actually taste the individual ingredients of the filling. Best so far.

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Ranking:

1. Thomas the Baker

2. Aldi Deep Filled

3. Aldi Iced

Any betting Cooplands the Bakers tops the rankings ?.

Edited October 4 by Stirlin

[The Hallucinating Goose]

14 hours ago, Stirlin said:

Any betting Cooplands the Bakers tops the rankings ?.

This morning I tried a couple of varieties from Cooplands.

The classic mince pie was tasty though not as flavoursome as the Thomas the Baker one and the pastry was a bit harder and grittier.

The Brandy mince pie however was delicious! So tasty! The pastry was soft and on top was some light and creamy icing that was reminiscent of the texture of a frangipane. Easily the best so far! 

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Ranking:

1. Cooplands Brandy

2. Thomas the Baker

3. Cooplands Classic

4. Aldi Deep Filled

5. Aldi Iced

[The Hallucinating Goose]

Tonight I have tried Tesco classic mince pies and I have to say they are the worst yet. There wasn't much flavour to the filling and they weren't very well filled. The pastry was quite hard and crunchy and didn't particularly taste of anything. 

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Ranking:

1.  Cooplands Brandy

2. Thomas the Baker

3. Cooplands Classic

4. Aldi Deep Filled

5. Aldi Iced

6. Tesco Classic

[JohnM]

IT'S NOT CHRISTMAS YET!!!

(but IKEA are selling Christmas trees already)

[DavidM]

2024 a mince pie odyssey 

[The Hallucinating Goose]

My latest foray into the mince pie world has seen me try the classic M&S mince pie. The filling had very little taste too it and the casing wasn't the fullest. The lid of the casing was much harder than some and had the texture and flavour akin to a shortbread biscuit. I like shortbread but not in this context. I have to say I was not impressed but it still beats tesco I think.

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Ranking:

1. Cooplands Brandy

2. Thomas the Baker

3. Cooplands Classic

4. Aldi Deep Filled

5. Aldi Iced

6. M&S Classic

7. Tesco Classic

[Wiltshire Warrior Dragon]

Happy munching, HG, but I won't be joining you in searching out commercially produced ones.

As luck (for me!) would have it, Mrs WWD is an excellent cook; hardly surprising given that we first met in the cafe her mother owned and ran in Skipton - truly, the way to a man's heart is through his stomach!

Making mince pies for Christmas is something she does regularly.  The pastry for the pies will be home-made, as will the mincemeat.  They are excellent.

In some years, she has too much mincemeat, so she just saves it until next year.  No doubt its alcohol content helps with the preservation process!

So it's home-made or nothing for me!

That preservative effect, incidentally, would be, I think, why mincemeat traditionally consisted of a mix of real meat, with fruit, spices and a bit of booze, as Futtocks noted above.  The meat, I imagine, would thus have been preserved by the other ingredients; hence, it wouldn't go 'off' and thus wasn't wasted.

[Futtocks]

I rarely buy mince pies either, as my stepmother makes great ones. She makes a very thin, very short pastry and the pies are quite small, so you end up eating loads of them.

[The Hallucinating Goose]

Okay, this evening the Goose family has tried mince pies from the Iceland Food Warehouse. 

They were smaller than others and not as deep, although the casing was well filled. The pastry was some of the nicest so far, soft and crumbling but they were let down a little by the filling which didn't have a lot of flavour to it. Not bad.

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1. Cooplands Brandy

2. Thomas the Baker

3. Cooplands Classic

4. Aldi Deep Filled

5. Iceland

6. Aldi Iced

7. M&S Classic

8. Tesco Classic

[unapologetic pedant]

35 minutes ago, The Hallucinating Goose said:

Okay, this evening the Goose family has tried mince pies from the Iceland Food Warehouse. 

Aren't expert tasters supposed to spit stuff out?

You seem to be scoffing everything.

37 minutes ago, The Hallucinating Goose said:

7. M&S Classic

At Bolton M&S, about a month out from Christmas, an assistant used to chop up their latest mince pie offerings on a tray for shoppers to sample.

Sadly no longer. The store closed last year. Never thought I'd see the day.

The site is currently the subject of a major local news story. Somebody called Zedsy has sprayed "mystery Banksy-style artwork" onto one of the hoardings surrounding the building.

[Wiltshire Warrior Dragon]

1 hour ago, Futtocks said:

I rarely buy mince pies either, as my stepmother makes great ones. She makes a very thin, very short pastry and the pies are quite small, so you end up eating loads of them.

That sounds tastily familiar, Futtocks!

[Fly-By-TheWire]

I don't want to be that guy, but...   it's not even Halloween yet! 

Edited October 8 by Fly-By-TheWire

[JonM]

13 minutes ago, Fly-By-TheWire said:

I don't want to be that guy, but...   it's not even Halloween yet! 

In fairness, there's loads of birthday cards in the shops, and it's not even my birthday until March.

[The Hallucinating Goose]

2 hours ago, Fly-By-TheWire said:

I don't want to be that guy, but...   it's not even Halloween yet! 

What's that got to do with anything? There's mince pies for sale in the shops, there's a heck of a lot of shops to get through and I like mince pies so I'm enjoying eating them. It would be just the same arrangement with any other food stuff that I like and decide to review.