Greens butchers and Chapmans butchers

After a humiliating pie procurement last week, the pie master was able to present two pies: One from Essex and a new Norfolk pie. The Essex pie was made by Greens family butchers of Town Street, Thaxted, kindly supplied by Duncan Donaldson-Davidson. The Norfolk pie was from Chapmans family butchers of The Green Martham, just by the pond. The Walk Master had a bracing walk lined up for us to ensure we had an appetite for two pies! Parking on the cliffs of Mundesley, we headed east pausing to inspect the church of All Saints, noting its scratch dial and Norman slit window. We continued eastwards along the coast passing over the River Mun, or Mundesley Beck, where it headed into the sea and past the Mundesley inshore lifeboat station, where the RIB was having a wash. We continued as far as the Mundesley Holiday Village with its 1933 water tower, where we turned inland to Stow Mill. We headed back into Mundesley, passing the water works, from where the Walk Master had laid an 8” main to the water tower for Anglian Water. We headed up Heath lane, passing close to the 125,000-gallon water tower and past the Golf course to Gimingham. Here we turned south, passing the old diesel engine that provided power to the mill and onto Gimingham church of All Saints for our lunch stop. After consuming our sandwiches and looking around the church, photographing its scratch dial, we retraced our steps northward to the coast. Here were “bird men” floating in the sky, suspended from kites. We followed the cliff top eastwards back to the car accompanied at one point by a yellow Sea King helicopter. Back at the extremely windy car-parking venue, we decided that it would be best to relocate to the shoppers’ car park in town, for pie tasting and tea. First we sampled Quails eggs with celery salt then the pies: first was Greens outdoor reared Gloucester Old Spot pie, this was small on aroma but big on taste, the meaty filling had a good texture and was well seasoned, predominately with sage then pepper. The pastry did not find favour with all and this pie came in with a score of 8.1875 with a standard deviation of 0.84251. The second offering was pies made on the premises of Chapmans butchers: Three good-looking 8oz pies were sliced into thirds and released a wonderful aroma... The nice marbled pink filling was surrounded by air and not a hint of jelly. Unfortunately these pies had little flavour and needed mustard. The pastry too, was bland so a poor score of 4.9375 with a standard deviation of 1.02. Thankfully we had the Shortcake to rejuvenate the taste buds. So Greens outdoor reared Gloucester Old Spot pie scores a normalised 8, Chapmans scores a normalised 5.

      Greens of Thaxted                                     Chapmans of Marthham