Cranberry sauce
Asda Extra Special Cranberry Sauce, £1 for 240g. An appealing dark colour, nice grainy texture and great balance of sweet and tart flavours.
Waitrose Cranberry & Mulled Wine Sauce, £2.49 for 300g. Bright and fresh-looking, with a clean flavour, but an unwelcome lingering aftertaste of cinnamon.
Tesco Finest Wild Cranberry Sauce, £1.07 for 200g. Very dark, very sweet and tasting more of blackberries than cranberries. But it has a good texture and goes down well enough.
Smoked salmon
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Ocean Sea Norwegian Smoked Salmon (available from Lidl), £2.59 for 200g. A good balance of fish and smoke flavours. The colour suggests wild salmon and the texture’s good, too.
Morrisons The Best Spey Valley Smoked Salmon, £2.99 for 125g. Appetisingly bright and cut thick enough to have a bit of bite. There’s definitely smoke, but not too much to mask the salmon.
Marks & Spencer Kiln Roasted Orkney Smoked Salmon, £4.99 for 100g. Great-quality fish — it’s just a shame that the smoke overpowers it.
Mince pies
Morrisons 6 Deep Filled Mince Pies, £1.19. These look home-baked, with a buttery richness and satisfyingly weighty feel. There’s a lovely hint of salt to the pastry — it shows just how sickly sweet some of the others are.
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Waitrose 6 All Butter Mince Pies, £2.69. There’s a pleasing ratio of good, crumbly pastry to filling. The mincemeat is a little one-dimensional, though — orangey, but lacking in balancing spice.
Sainsbury’s Taste the Difference 6 Mince Pies, £1.99. This is a solid pie: tasty, slightly salty pastry and a soft fruity filling that, after a few munches, does perhaps become a little cloying.
Brandy butter
Morrisons The Best Brandy Butter with R?my Martin, £1.75 for 150g. Smooth, buttery and with a big kick of alcohol. Everything a Christmas pudding could wish for.
Marks & Spencer R?my Martin Channel Islands Brandy Butter, £2.99. A rich caramel colour, with a granular, home-made texture and nice rich flavour.
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Lidl Morning Fresh Brandy Butter, £1.28. Straight-down-the-line brandy butter: sugar, butter and brandy in all the right quantities.
Christmas puddings
Co-op Truly Irresistible, £5.49 for 454g. Beautiful, rich colour, with good, plump fruit and wonderful Christmassy taste. This one covers all the bases.
Tesco Finest 18-Month Matured, £11 for 907g. Nice and light, full of nuts and with all the flavour you’d expect.
Marks & Spencer Connoisseur Matured, £9.99 for 454g. Not as dark or rich as you’d like, but very pleasant tasting.
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Christmas cake
Asda Extra Special Hand-finished Christmas Cake, £12 for 1.3kg. Pretty holly decorations top a rich, fruity cake with just the right hint of alcohol. The marzipan and icing were among the best too.
Holly Lane Luxury All Over Iced Christmas Cake, Aldi £6.99 for 1.36kg. Slightly mean-looking with tiny holly decorations, but the raisin-packed cake is moist and flavoursome.
Tesco Finest Iced Rich Fruit Christmas Cake, £14 for 1.5kg. The prettiest cake on test — and with its own tin. Lighter in colour than the others but plenty of citrus and nutmeg.