Heinz Ploughman's Pickle: A Test Drive

In 1826 James Sharp purchased 200 acres of land that he found especially beautiful in order to build a log cabin for his wife there. The place came to be known as Sharpsburg and in 1869 the H.J. Heinz Company was founded there. Their first product was a horesradish condiment. By 1892 they had more than sixty products; however, as the number 5 had special significance to Henry John Heinz and 7 had special significance to his wife, the firm started using the slogan "57 varieties".

We recently took their "Ploughman's Pickle" for a test drive through a series of narrow country vegetables with some exhilirating stretches of muffin. Finally to fully assess it's performance we tried it out on a handraised pork pie and a slice of mozarella.

The handling was very responsive despite the pickle being mass-produced. The flavour did perhaps lack the oomph of more high-performance pickles but that is reflected in the price tag.

Finally a number of our readers have asked us to give a rating the various produce we review in this pages. We wouldn't wanted to lower ourselves to the vulgarity of a simple linear 1 to 10 scale but in order to assist our readers we will be asigning a shape to give a sense of how we perceived the experience. In order to help our readers benchmark this accurately we will also give a colour to indicate our mood at the time. We always welcome these interesting pieces of feedback from readers.

Mood: Sea mist billowing to autumunal greens and oranges.

Experience: Rhombus with a slightly drooping point.

The White Horse, Newburgh Street, Soho

The White Horse is a musical about the head waiter of an Austrain inn who falls hoplelessly in love with it's owner. The pictuesque specimen of the public house bearing this name down a little cobbled lane a stone's throw from lively Carnaby Street is one that any man would easily fall in love with. I must confess after dining over a hearty toad-in-the-hole at the establishment I did indeed fall in love with.

I returned one luncheon for a more bread, cheese and pickle orientated tryst. Unfortunately it all started to go wrong even as my luncheon companion and I nestled down in it's embracing dark wood pannelled depths on a particularly sunny day. The barmaid despite being possessed of an appropriately ample bosom seemed to harbour some kind of deep-seated hatred of all other members of her fair sex. My companion was rightly peeved at this.

When our order had finally been lodged with the kitchens a runner was immediately dispatched bearing the ill tidings that there remained no Stilton on the premises. Rather than throwing up my arms in horror I jovially invited them to marry the Cheddar with any other cheese of their choosing. My surprise at being told that there was no non-Cheddar cheese to be had was such that my eyebrows were able to remove several cobwebs from the ceiling; thankfully my upper lip remained entirely motionless.

The repast being delivered in due course, we found that there was adequate if monotonic cheese.Bread-to-butter ratio was within acceptable tolerances; apple presentation had a pleasing simplicity that is becoming fashionable nowadays. Unfortunately the pie had an anameic pallor that was genuinely frightened; we can only speculate that this was some manner of spectral haunting that one would usually delight in at such a pleasantly aged building.