Morrisons Vale of Mowbray

Frankly, I wasn't looking forward to this pie. Yesterday we'd feasted on Fortnum's finest, and the snob in me eyed up Morrisons' celophane-wrapped, stretching-the-sell-by-date offering with more than a little trepidation.

'Vale of Mowbray'? Made in Bradford, mate. This is a small pie with big pretensions, despite the 79p for two price tag. The label didn't make pleasant reading: 357 calories. Enough additives to pickle Tutankhamun. And the killer admission (for one of our panel, at least): may contain traces of nuts.

Out of the packet. Just an ordinary pie. Dry, neat, perhaps a little too factory-perfect. It cut fairly well, with just the right hint of flakiness.

Sliced into the usual quadrants, all the boxes seemed to have been ticked: a crispy coat, a waxy inside, the solid rump of pinky porky goodness. But wait a minute: where's the gelatinous gooeyness that is the pork pie's stock in trade?

(Call me a pork pie philistine, but I've never been terribly keen on oodles of jelly in my pie, so in me, the little pie from oop North was already winning an admirer.)

Taste test. At first munch, the main sensation was a pleasant crunchiness. No undue moistness, no overbearing saltiness. But the anticipated bouquet of well-seasoned pork just didn't materialise. In fact, at no stage did this pie reveal itself as containing any flavour of meat at all.

In this pie, Morrison's have put texture before taste, shelf-life before seasoning, mechanically-reclaimed manufacturing before perky piglets, popping out of the pie to prance on your palette.

And yet, and yet. As my fellow taster put it: "I could eat this pie all day". There I am, an aficionado of all things organic and artisanal, munching pretty happily on this unassuming little offering. It's trash, I know it, but like so much other junk food, there's something unexpectedly comforting about it. Even if that something isn't flavour.

Flavour balance: meat 10%, pastry 90%, gelatine 0%.

Overall score: 7/10