Brays

No dogs and no scratch dials, despite visiting three churches on our pre-pie appetiser walk around Aldborough on the last Sunday of the month. We did find a wonderful welcoming pub: The Crown in Aldborough, it served a good pint of Wherry and had very comfortable seats – so comfortable Josie nodded off! Returning to the car for this month’s second sampling of Brays pork pies – Ricky had spotted a Deli in Norwich selling pork pies so purchased a brace. Sampling the pies this time, the onion marmalade didn’t feature so prominently, allowing the full flavour of the Saddleback to be enjoyed, scoring an 8.11111, so a normalised 8 with a standard deviation of 0.6. Following the canapés and pork pie tasting, we were treated to a lovely Ginger Birthday cake cooked by the Führer herself (we won’t ask what oven she used) to celebrate the Pie Masters forthcoming birthday – Thank you Margaret!

Archers (Est. 1929)

A wonderful walk on Sunday the 17th, through West Harling Heath and around Riddlesworth with moderate aluminium can collecting, was the precursor to the second outing of Archers pork pies: We all agreed the pastry was really good but the meat filling was lacking in flavour, resulting in a score of a spot on 7 and a standard deviation of 0.70711, so that’s another normalised 7 for Archers. Previously it scored 7.1 with a fairly high standard deviation of 0.89443. This was on Trafalgar day 2006 at Reedham.

Jarrold’s deli and Brays

The second Sunday we sampled an old favourite: Jarrold’s deli Pork Pie – last sampled on the 29th October 2006 when it scored a healthy 8.5 with a standard deviation of only 0.5. Had the quality been maintained or have our taste buds become more discerning? We hossed out to Holkham, to hopefully see the Geese migration and because there wouldn’t be too many people about... Wrong! There were hoards of people enjoying the good weather. We thought there were a lot of dogs on our last walk – this week there were 100’s on the beach! Our stroll along the beach took us to the Globe, in Wells next-the Sea for a pint of Wherry, we then came back for pie tasting inland... A horrendous noise then started at the car park – I was worried that we would not be able to concentrate on the pie scores. Eventually the noise increased and a Sea King Helicopter rose from behind the trees and then left us in peace. So, had Jarrold’s produced the goods? The pie had good hand raised appearance and a firm smooth filling with pleasant aroma. It tasted good too... scoring 8.28571, so a normalised 8.5 and a standard deviation of 0.48795 – the quality had been maintained. Paul then produced two Brays pork pies – completely different in appearance being similar in shape to an overgrown mince pie. Internally to, the filling of Saddleback rare breed pigs had a pleasant course texture rather than the smooth filling. A good pie, slightly gamy with an onion marmalade complementing the meat. This pie didn’t score quite so highly coming in with very respectable 7.33333 and standard deviation of 0.40825. So, that’s a normalised 7.5 for Brays this time. This pie featured in the first PPN when we sampled it in Sheringham Park mid walk on the 8th July, then it scored 8.5625 with a standard deviation of 0.6781, previously it had scored 8.16667 with a 0.25 standard deviation when we sampled them in Binham on the 22nd April 2006. No water towers on this weeks walk but we did see an incredible eight towers from the car!

Waitrose Melton Mowbray Pork Pie

After awful weather on Friday evening, with loads of snow, Saturday wasn’t as bad as forecast and Sunday yielded a bright but cold day, initially with a biting wind. A very pleasurable walk around Blickling meeting many lovely dogs soon got us warm. The walk took in distant views of the 1920’s St. Michael’s Hospital water tower, observed last month and the 1884 Blickling Hall water tower, on the mound. Returning to the car for Canapés, Tea and a Waitrose Melton Mowbray Pork Pie – a new pie to us. The pie had good appearance and was surprisingly a little pink, for uncured meat. A pleasant aroma was not followed by a taste explosion, rather bland, perhaps subtle as Charles got hints of Butternut Squash! A pleasant pie with quite acceptable pastry scoring 7.64286 with a standard deviation of 0.44759, so a normalised 7.5 for Waitrose.

1884 Blickling Hall water tower