VALUE FOR MONEY

This week, Value for Money compares leading brands of horseradish sauce.

Tesco Finest Horseradish Sauce

€1.69 for 165g, €10.24 per kg

Highs: This is a particularly mild-flavoured sauce and one which has been very finely puréed. It is made with 11 per cent cream which lends it a richness some of the competition would benefit from. It is surprisingly sweet and is clearly trying to be an upmarket brand.

Lows: Apart from its price, we're not sure it warrants the "finest" tag. It has the colour and texture of washed out, mushy tapioca and we reckoned the flavour was just a little too subtle. We were also pretty sure - having put it to the test - that it will not be noticed on a plate swamped with your Sunday roast. It is also surprisingly expensive for a Tesco own-brand product.

Verdict: Not the finest

Star rating: **

Colman's Horseradish sauce

€1.61 for 250ml, €6.44 per litre

Highs: This is almost certainly the most widely recognised brand we tried and while the company is a whole lot better known for its mustards, it makes a pretty good fist of this sauce too. The small pieces of horseradish actually tasted remarkably fresh and the pleasant mustardy hit compliments, but doesn't overpower the other ingredients. It has the texture, thickness and colour of well-cooked porridge so it won't slide all over your plate, and is pretty cheap too. It will also be the easiest of the sauces to track down, no matter where you are.

Lows: We can't really fault this one in taste or price terms but it does perhaps lack just a little of the fresh creaminess to be found in some of the other brands.

Verdict: Top notch

Star rating: ****

Nolan's Hot Horseradish Sauce

€2.59 for 270g, €9.59 per kg

Highs: We had high hopes for this on the basis that Nolan's of Clontarf is an excellent supermarket and initially it did not disappoint with its strong flavours and chunky pieces of horseradish.

Lows: It was all downhill after that, however. We thought - largely because it is presented as such - that we were getting some class of, possibly homemade, artisan-style, Irish-made product, when what we actually got was a jar of fairly ordinary, UK-produced sauce which had a brown paper Nolan's label slapped on top of it. It has very little to recommend it, nothing by way of creaminess and a faintly sharp and unpleasant aftertaste that lingered a whole lot longer than we would have liked.

Verdict: Disappointing

Star rating: **

Cottage Horseradish Sauce from Lidl

€0.85 for 165g €5.15 per kg

Highs:This is very, very cheap and very, very good value. It is made with the highest percentage of horseradish - at 47 per cent, it has over twice the fresh horseradish that some of the competition has. The sizeable lumps of the root vegetable are almost floating in a creamy sauce, which is very thin. It has a pretty powerful kick to it and there doesn't seem to be anything particularly dodgy on the ingredient list.

Lows: It has a sharp, vinegary kick which might be too much for some tastes. And while it is to be commended for all the horseradish, some of it was a little on the soft - and almost soggy - side. It was also just a little thin in consistency and we're not sure how long a small jar will actually last.

Verdict: Great value

Star rating: ****

Mrs Bridges Hot Horseradish Sauce

€5.95 for €255g, €23.33 per kg

Highs: The horseradish in this jar has been minced very, very finely indeed. It is quite sweet and very thick and, despite the jar's boast, on the mild side, which might suit some tastes.

Lows: Not us, however. We couldn't help feeling just a little conned by this product. This won a gold medal at the Great Taste awards in 2006 although we couldn't for the life of us see how, as it tasted pretty poor to us. From the gold elastic that ties the paper onto the jar to the plump lady etched on the side, this Scottish sauce seems to be more about marketing than substance. "The difference is the taste," the bottle assures us, but it didn't taste that great to us. It was also hideously and inexplicably dear.

Verdict: Ridiculously expensive

Star rating: *