Pastry looks a tad undercooked…
English Heritage published a 1591 recipe for real mince pies…
http://blog.english-heritage.org.uk/recipe-for-real-mince-pies/
… Infact I can feel the undercooked clag on my pallette 250 miles away
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Pastry is actually really well cooked. It is the meat-pie-a-like egg wash that does them no favours.
Actually I might phone them up and complain.
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What is the egg wash for, colour?
and crispness - i wonder what a lard and mayo wash would achieve
Small claims court?
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Which brings me on to these monstrosities…
Brought home from the Island Shop 10 minutes ago. Made by a small independent Mainland bakery.
At first sight they appear to encompass all the rong
As for taste, overly sweet (especially with the unnecessary dusting) certainly not all-butter pastry, poor and bland filling
A generous 3/10 is about as much as I could give them
Their ONLY redeeming feature is that the shopkeeper gave me them F.O.C. I’ve eaten one and the birds will be getting the other 3 tomorrow.
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Ha…you’re supposed to be a bird-lover… 
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Indeed. Reported to the RSPB.
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Strangely the lady next door who has some kind of baking disorder delivered ginger biscuits instead of the more usual mince pies, so this is Northern Irish offering.
I may actually have one of these later.
Naturally baking lady’s delivery also included the usual three hundredweight of really sweet shortbread 
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Well, as the season grinds-on I’ve had to deal with the fact that our beloved local baker has gone forever, plus I’m altogether too bone-idle to cook my own 'spies, so supermarket it must be. I’ve worked my way thru the dross, and some expensive options, and the best I’ve had (it pains me to say) remain these:
Perfect they are not - they have Silly Lid Syndrome (but only just, they nearly fit), and they are dusted with sugar (but not a lot, and not any silly flavours).
The pastry claims all-butter, but it is not obvious in the taste, however the mouthfeel is pretty good - quite biscuity, fairly firm and not-at-all claggy, and it’s decently well-cooked while still leaving a margin for 5 minutes in the oven should you wish.
The filling is again, for shop-bought, rather good - flavoursome, moist, chewy, not over-sweet, with noticeable citrus astringency. Spicing is evident, but subtle; I Am OK With This. The alcohol content is not very assertive, but that can be remedied by having a glass of brandy to-hand to cleanse one’s palate between pies - one must suffer for one’s art at times…
I’d give them 7/10 with caveats duly noted as above.
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We had some of those. I wasn’t that impressed by them and was a bit annoyed at the huge empty space in the pastry case. You put filling in a pie to actually fill the fucking thing. It is not called partial filling or nearly filling for reasons.
Cunts…
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fussy cunt
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Yep. To be fair to M&S though, their pies are consistently half full every fucking year so you know exactly what you are buying.
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I find that all supermarket pies are underfilled, so much so that I’ve stopped noticing.
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I want a pie now.
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The utter bastards 
