Sausage Shop, Holt

Finally, four of us had an interesting walk around Kenninghall, on the last Sunday of the month. Despite having the very tall, 265,000-gallon water tower as a reference point, we ended up walking through someone’s garden, we later thought we shouldn’t have! We did have an excellent pork pie to end with from the Sausage Shop in Holt (with an indicative score of 9.125) however too few pie munchers to form a quorum, so not included on the score sheet – I look forward to judging this properly at a later date!

Pâté en Croûte Cocktail and Carters of Acle

The penultimate September walk from Little Barningham was quite uneventful, but the highlight was at the end when we had two pies to sample! The first offering was provided by Gilly Hudson and was a French “pork pie” – actually a “Pâté en Croûte Cocktail”. This had a soft pastry with a pâté filling. Although tasty, this was judged, rather harshly, as a pork pie, unsurprisingly it only scored a 4.75 with a high standard deviation of 1.6046807. Josie hoping to repeat her good pie selection of earlier this month produced three small pies from Carters Family Butchers of Acle. These pies were badly let down by an exceptionally lardy pastry, the meat filling itself was quite acceptable, though not a great pie with only a score of 5.571429 and a standard deviation of 0.8380817. So that’s a normalised 5 for the Pâté en Croûte Cocktail from France and a 5.5 for Carters of Acle.

Alburgh

On Sunday 16th, we walked around Alburgh (Norfolk) coming across an old David Brown tractor and gathering lots of sloes & blackberries. We crossed the oldest concrete bridge in Britain, to enjoy a very pleasant pint of IPA, but this was not followed by a pork pie! We didn’t have enough pie enthusiasts to form a quorum, so I present the following Pie Interlude: In the town of Pisov in the Urals, there is a tradition that the suitor for a maiden's hand, bakes a great pork pie in the shape of a true lover's knot. This he cuts in half. He keeps one half. Riding by night with his companions he tosses the other half into the chamber of the beloved, as she lies sleeping. If the maiden is up for it, her half is paraded at the Pisov, Great Pork Dripping Fair and she becomes betrothed to her suitor on production of the matching half. Now it’s no good reading the Encyclopedia Britannica or searching Encarta or Wikipedia for such Pork Pie traditions - you need to consult the Bystanders web site at http://www.byssoc.co.uk/fondler.php

Arthur Howell

Josie produced the goods on the second outing of the month: A large pie from Arthur Howell Butchers of Wells-next-the-Sea. After an eventful walk around the Raynhams, where we stumbled upon Raynham Hall’s, Grade II listed, water tower & Giada decided to go swimming in a ditch she couldn’t get out of on her own, the Pie tasting commenced: The pie had a very good appearance but the proof of the pie is in the tasting and it did not disappoint, scoring 8.2 with a standard deviation of 0.4472136 - so that's a normalised 8 for Arthur Howell of Wells-next-the-Sea.

Pork pie brings home the bacon in food awards

The Independent reports today, that the pork pie is one of the world's leading delicacies... You can view it online by clicking here. The pie that came top of 4,000 food products was from Walter Smith's butchers in Staffordshire.

Sainsbury’s Melton Mowbray Lattice pork pie

We started September as we ended August, with an offering from Sainsbury’s: A Melton Mowbray Lattice pork pie. This was consumed in Harleston (Norfolk) library car park, after an anti-clockwise walk around Harleston - it’s 1939, 200,000-gallon water tower acting as a central reference point. Following the “music” accompanied walk (a rave was going on near by) and an indifferent pint at a very welcoming pub with two dogs, we got down to the serious business of judging the pie! Not a bad appearance with a pinkey grey filling, the flavour was nothing inspiring and a little salt, reflected in it’s very average score of 6.9 or 7 after “normalisation” with a standard deviation of 0.547722558.