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ask pie-man

Dear pie-man,

I have recently been trying to find the website for Fray Bentos. I was going to complain to them about the portions of meat they put in them. I'm sure they used to put more meat in them - they seem to be all pastry these days. Do you have a URL for Fray Bentos and what do you think of their paltry meat portions (in particular the steak and ale)?

Best regards,

Stu

Hi, Stu.

Fray Bentos do not appear to have an official website - certainly we can't find one. We suspect this is partially because Fray Bentos pies appear to magically sell themselves without extra publicity, and partially out of sheer shame. They do publish an address on their cans - you can write to them at Consumer Relations Department, Campbell Grocery Products Ltd, King's Lynn, Norfolk PE30 4HS. And we suggest you do exactly that, because you have a point.

Admittedly, Fray Bentos pies were never much to write home about, not even on a postcard if you used really big writing to fill up the space. But the modern Fray Bentos is, frankly, a thing of ridicule. I have the Steak & Mushroom variety in front of me as I type, and I am starting to suspect it of being some kind of performance art experiment.

Where do we start? Well, "no preservatives" is a good a point as any. It's true, there are no preservatives. However they omit to mention the two colourings, three flavour enhancers, one stabiliser and two flavourings that do lurk within. I don't see any proud reference to the fact that beef fat and monosodium glutamate each appear in the ingredients list twice, nor to the unsettling presence of "dried beef bonestock" and the enigmatic "Herb". Was Herb the name of the cow concerned? Is it a tribute to that stalwart of the charity shop and legend of the quasi-Latin trumpet-centric beat combo, Herb Alpert? Or do they mean it in a more Rastafarian sense? We may never know.

"Important: Remove lid before baking" it says, with impressive understatement. I should imagine most atomic weaponry says something along similar lines, although they might miss out the bit about baking. At some stage pie-man might have to get a camping stove and some military hats and binoculars, and perform a test firing of a Fray Bentos in a large field to ascertain just what would happen if you disobeyed this cardinal rule. But until then I think it's safe to assume baking a Fray Bentos with the lid on might be a fairly obvious thing to avoid doing.

We like the natty little logo made of two intertwined letter Ps, to indicate the presence of puff pastry. Perhaps this should be made standard, like the old kite mark. We could have a big G stamped on products that contain gravy, perhaps BM for button mushrooms, SAC for sulphite ammonia caramel (handy here), ST for small twigs, AGA for aircraft-grade aluminium, TPT for Tara Palmer-Tomkinson and so on.

But all this is getting us no closer to an answer. 26.5% beef is the figure given on our can, and even that sounds optimistic given our last experience of a Fray Bentos pie. It is possible that Fray Bentos have been performing the Wagon Wheel Manoeuvre, a complex double-bluff in which they take advantage of our readiness to believe our memories are false. We say "they don't make them like that any more" with an ironic smile, knowing that we were smaller then, so maybe Wagon Wheels and the chunks of beef in Fray Bentos seemed massive in comparison. Did we really remember holding that vast chunk of beef with both hands, staring at it through a haze of gravy and wide-eyed wonder? Or was it all a dream? Until someone comes forward with an age-old Fray Bentos from the back of the cupboard for comparison, we may never know.

Whatever, we at pie-man.com would advise you to write to Fray Bentos nonetheless. Not to complain about a reduction in meat content, nor even about the general paltriness of that 26.5%. No, we just think you should complain about the overall mingingness of Fray Bentos pies. Even without the aid of MSG, dried bone stock and Herb, you could easily make a pie yourself that knocks the venerable Bentos into a cocked hat, whatever one of those is. It's no quicker than an ordinary pie to cook, it isn't terribly good for you and it's bizarrely packaged in a can that explodes when baked. Admirable though it may be that such a surreal product has survived for so long, there is surely now a case for Fray Bentos to answer. Godspeed on your quest, Stu.