It is easy to imagine that pesto has been around for ever. In fact, Sacla’s jarred version of this basil sauce – the first mass-produced pesto distributed in the UK – only appeared on supermarket shelves in 1991. Even in Italy itself, pesto is a relatively modern creation. Historically, the Roman sauces agliata and moretum combined garlic with nuts or oil and cheese, and there are old Georgian walnut-and-oil sauces that possibly influenced the seafaring home of pesto, Liguria, where preserving basil leaves in olive oil was commonplace. But the pesto alla Genovese we know today – named after the region’s capital, Genoa, made with pine nuts and Parmigiano-Reggiano – only became a “thing” in the 19th century. (Possibly because greenhouses had belatedly made the industrial production of small basil leaves practical. Bigger ones can taste unsuitably minty and lemony.)
An instant hit, the original fresh, pestle-pounded pestos were light and grassy, made using mild, buttery Ligurian olive oils and modest amounts of parmesan and Sardinian pecorino. Jarred versions have always been comparatively salty and deeply savoury, a great wallop of flavour. Still the UK’s best seller in this £38m-a-year market, Sacla’s pesto is no exception to that (190g, about £2.30; 5/10). However, that bullishness has not inhibited pesto’s success – nor has brands incorporating cheaper ingredients such as cashews, grana padano cheese and sunflower oil (including Sacla). The sauce is now ubiquitous, whether dressing pasta or jazzing up everything from soups to potato salads. But are any of the supermarket own-brands better than Sacla’s? And are the fresh, chiller-cabinet pestos worth the extra expense?
Ocado
Mattarello basil pesto
Fresh, 150g, £2.75
The Fresh Pasta Company, which owns the Mattarello brand, makes an ostensibly superior, very expensive pesto (using Genovese basil; 130g, £5.49), also available through Ocado. It has an incredible colour (think: algae on an Amazonian pond) but this far cheaper pesto is still vibrant and much better. It has a good chunky texture and, while it tastes predominantly of salty grana padano and garlic – the basil is more a diaphanous presence – it does so in a way that is smooth and bold. It leaves most jarred pestos for dead. 9/10
Tesco
Finest* pesto alla Genovese
190g, £2
This pesto gives it the big ’un (50% Ligurian basil, extra virgin olive oil, Parmigiano-Reggiano and, erm, added bamboo fibre) but conspicuously fails to deliver. It has a good fragrance but a loose, oily, slightly gummy consistency. The basil has been pulped into mulch that carries such scant flavour you could be chewing wet grass. Like so many jarred pestos, this tastes neutered and cheap. Its cheese flavour is discernible, but skulks around and shrinks beneath a dominant, unpalatably acidic top note. 4/10
Waitrose
Waitrose 1 pesto Genovese
Fresh, 145g, £2.99
As mesmerisingly green as the baize on a newly installed pub pool table, this looks fantastic, but tastes flat. It sets you up for a great gust of basil and aged parmesan that never quite happens. Likewise, the promising toasted pine nuts bobbing in there fail to assert themselves. Sure, it is significantly more rounded and interesting than the jarred Waitrose 1 pesto but, for a fresh sauce, it is relatively bland and dogged by some curiously astringent, prickly flavour compounds that flash in its wake. 6/10
Morrison’s
The Best pesto alla Genovese
190g, £1.33
The smell leaps out – not necessarily in a good way. It is like inhaling from an overgrown pot of flabby, fleshy basil surrounded by sweating cheese rinds. The flavour is better if muddled. It tastes foremost of extra virgin olive oil (counterintuitively, innocuous sunflower oil is often a better base), parmesan and, trailing in third place, basil. The texture is the usual jarred, silty mush, but it is not overly salty or harsh and at least the basil features, albeit in a supporting role. Basically, it is OK. 6/10
Lidl
Baresa pesto alla Genovese
190g, 99p
This looks terrible. Instead of a smooth verdant emulsion, the pesto has apparently split in the jar. Dark green oil swims above pale, milky coagulate. Vigorous shaking sorts it out, but why bother? It is an oily concoction and the basil has all the flavour of hedge trimmings. Apart from salt, bland nuttiness and a distinctive late sour tang, it tastes of little. With its meagre pecorino and pine nut content (1.5% and 1% respectively), this pesto is doing the bare minimum to fulfil its brief. 2/10
Sainsbury’s
Italian green pesto
Fresh, 150g, £2
Trendsetting Sainsbury’s introduced its first fresh pesto way back in 1991. Yet this unattractively green-and-white-speckled creation still tastes like a work in progress. It smells great and it has a big, full flavour, but that flavour is all rich and salty, savoury umami body (from an unidentified “medium-fat hard cheese”), with lemon and pecorino making peppy interventions around that. The basil is a peripheral presence. True, the Italians happily play around with pesto’s ingredient ratios, but such a heavily cheese-focused pesto seems, while not unpleasant, slightly odd. 7/10
Asda
Extra Special pesto alla Genovese
190g, £1.95
This is anchored by a ripe, tangy cheesiness, edged with quieter, almost sour metallic notes. In its complexity, it is reminiscent of eating right up to the rind on a piece of parmesan. In that regard, this is, arguably, a less salty and more interesting pesto than Sacla’s. But it has two significant flaws: the pine nuts have been pounded into undetectable smithereens; and the basil, a generous 50% of the total ingredients, is dull and tired. I spat out several chewy, fibrous bits. 5/10
Co-op
Loved by Us green pesto
190g, £1.19
Like Lidl’s Baresa, this looks terrible in the jar – a lumpy, pallid mass topped with vivid green oil. But open it and, in both its aroma and flavour, it has genuinely expressive basil character; one cradled (rather than steamrollered) by grana padano’s baseline savouriness and punctuated, if a little clumsily, by a faintly lemony sharpness. That is achieved by pecorino, despite it being a mere 1% of the ingredients. The texture is better, too – the nuts, mainly cashews, have not been blitzed into a slurry. 8/10
