Mayonnaise

Asda real mayonnaise
70p for 500ml, asda.com
This is nice. Velvety, smooth. This would be really good with stuff mixed into it in a sandwich which for me is the main purpose of mayo.
★★★★

Heinz seriously good mayonnaise
£2.55 for 480ml, ocado.com
This is light and airy and has a good zing to it. This actually tastes like mayonnaise and not like salad cream.
★★★★

Taste the Difference mayonnaise
£1.50 for 230g, sainsburys.com
Salad creamy … this would be good if we were tasting salad creams but we are not. It’s yellower than the others. Looks posh.
★★★

Dr Will’s classic mayonnaise
£3.49 for 240g, ocado.com
Bit runny. I think mayo should be a little firmer. Extremely creamy, slightly like salad cream. It’s got little bits in it … I wonder what they might be?
★★

Ketchup

Heinz tomato ketchup
£2.55 for 650g, ocado.com
This is the smoothest, the most emulsified. Looking at it, it has the smallest bits in it. Good sweet and sour finish. Sugary, vinegary, tomatoey.
★★★★

Essential Waitrose tomato ketchup
65p for 470g, waitrose.com
It has a classic ketchup flavour, slightly musty finish. Satisfyingly sweet and sour. It performs the task you want from ketchup.
★★★★

London Steakhouse Company posh ketchup
£3.25 for 250ml, ocado.com
Fancies itself as a posh ketchup. Lots of sugar and it feels bitty in the mouth. It’s not very well emulsified. I can’t see a situation where I’d think it was delicious.
★

Stokes real tomato ketchup
£2.49 for 300g, ocado.com
Looks like barbecue sauce. It’s got an odd texture … it wobbles, like a poorly set panna cotta. I don’t like it. Tastes like it has that mushroom ketchup mixed into it. Not tomatoey at all.
★

Brown sauce

Stokes real brown sauce
£2.99 for 320g, ocado.com
Very dark. It has a slight wibble about it. Tastes like a slightly more artisan-y, traditional greasy-spoon brown sauce. Zingy and tangy. Shares some flavours with fizzy cola bottles, which as a Haribo fan I rather like.
★★★

Tesco brown sauce
90p for 465g, tesco.com
So shiny. It tastes a bit like HP Sauce, perhaps slightly more vinegary but it has a very traditional greasy-spoon brown sauce flavour.
★★

HP original sauce
£1.85 for 425g, ocado.com
It’s got a musty mustiness to it, like a back-of-the-cupboard-for- ten-years vibe. It tastes damp somehow, but it’s zingy … deep and sweet and vinegary.
★★

Tiptree brown sauce
£2.15 for 310g, ocado.com
Very sweet, almost raisin-y, tastes like molasses or muscovado. Not quite sharp enough. It almost has a Christmas-pudding vibe to it.
★★

Sriracha

Cooks’ Ingredients sriracha
£2.25 for 240g, waitrose.com
More noticeably sweet at the beginning than the others, and more rounded. It almost has a tomatoey freshness to it. Good warm heat to it and, lest we forget, this is chilli sauce.
★★★

Marks & Spencer sriracha sauce
£2 for 290g, marksandspencer.com
Relatively spicy. Traditional sriracha flavours … but oddly turnipy. I like turnips though … not unpleasant.
★★★

Flying Goose sriracha hot chilli sauce
£3.10 for 455ml, ocado.com
It has a dry-roasted peanut flavour, a classic sriracha taste. Very smooth. Not as spicy as I’d like. It burns on the finish rather than being flavourful.
★★

Sauce Shop sriracha
£2.99 for 250ml, ocado.com
I do not like this at all. The texture of it is horrible. Quite punchy. Tastes a bit like wet socks after a long walk, like damp leaves. This can get its coat and leave.
0 stars

Dijon mustard

Bramwells Dijon mustard
35p for 200g, aldi.co.uk
Punchy! I got that nosey-burn straightaway which I didn’t get from the others. Tastes more classic. I think this would be really good tempered in mayonnaise. Strong.
★★★★

Essential Waitrose Dijon mustard
72p for 180g, waitrose.com
This one looks more yellow-y. It’s not that strong … is it saltier? Quite punchy. Smooth, creamy, with a fresh mustardy flavour.
★★★

Tesco Dijon mustard
55p for 185g, tesco.com
Definitely looks thicker, firmer, with a more solid texture. This looks the most like dijon. Not a massively strong flavour – relatively lightweight for dijon.
★★★

Maille Dijon original mustard
£1.50 for 215g, ocado.com
This is somehow creamier than the others. I don’t know if maybe it’s been blended more? Not all that punchy in flavour.
★★★

English mustard

Asda hot English mustard
37p for 180g, asda.com
A muted yellow … quite nice, some sweetness. Delayed punchiness, but perfectly pleasant. My favourite.
★★★★

Marks & Spencer hot English mustard
£1 for 180g, marksandspencer.com
Looks like chicken liver parfait dyed mustard-yellow. Slightly odd moussey texture. Not as strong as I thought it would be, probably not what you’d look for in an English mustard.
★★

Bramwells English mustard
35p for 200g, aldi.co.uk
Great colour, you’d slap that on a renaissance painting. Strong. Slight sweetness to it. There’s a nuttiness, like a rapeseed oil flavour.
★

Tracklements strong English mustard
£2.09 for 140g, ocado.com
Looks like it came out of a baby. Extremely thick. It’s like the mustard seeds have not been powdered, more bashed. Good solid flavour, but texturally not right. Why is it so lumpy?
★

All items blind-tested. Max Halley is the author of Max’s Sandwich Book (Blink, £14.99). Buy it for £13.19 from guardianbookshop.com