Langham's Grain Free Pate: Beef & Chicken Pate review

Three of these trays finish in our Excellent band, with the salmon and chicken one a step above them in Outstanding. The Excellent band is where the typical adult wet food lands as well, so this range keeps company with the stronger half of a category that scores well overall. The reasons are straightforward enough to read off the pack: 60% named meat and a base printed down to 0.65% for the carrot. Carbohydrate converts to between 8.0% and 14.0% of dry matter, against 15.8% for the typical adult wet food. Protein converts to 40.0% of dry matter on every tray and fat to between 28.0% and 34.0%, which is rich without being extreme for a wet recipe.

Ingredients, as declared: Grain Free Beef and Chicken: Beef (30%), Chicken (30%), Dried Potato (4%), Dried Peas (1.5%), Minerals, Dried Carrot (0.65%), Potato Starch, Sunflower Oil (0.2%), Salmon Oil (0.2%), D Xylose, Dried Tomato, Chicory Extract, Yucca Extract, Blackcurrant Extract, Citrus Extract, Dried Rosemary, Dried Pomegranate.

Each tray puts 60% of its weight into named meat, either one animal on its own or two at 30% each. There is no meat and animal derivatives entry anywhere in the range, which is what separates a label like this from a good deal of what sits beside it on the shelf.

The base is small and fully printed. Dried potato at 4% and potato starch give the tray its body, dried peas at 1.5% add a little fibre and plant protein, and dried carrot at 0.65% brings beta carotene. Potato starch is starch and not much else, but at this level it is doing a binding job rather than filling the tray out.

Sunflower oil and salmon oil each go in at 0.2%. Sunflower oil is among the gentler plant oils and carries vitamin E naturally. The salmon oil is there for its omega-3, and at 0.2% that is seasoning, not a working dose.

Then comes the flourish: tomato, blackcurrant, pomegranate and citrus alongside chicory and yucca extracts and dried rosemary. Chicory brings inulin, the fibre that feeds the gut's useful bacteria. Yucca has a long-standing reputation where stool odour is concerned, and rosemary works as a natural antioxidant. None of these is the reason to buy the tray, and every one of them is a trace.

D xylose sits in the middle of every list with no quantity against it. It is a simple plant sugar used in small amounts in wet food, and its position after the oils marks it as a minor entry, not a bulk sweetener.

The added panel is brief: vitamin A at 3000 IU, vitamin D3 at 350 IU and vitamin E at 40mg per kilo, with zinc at 25mg, iron at 20mg and manganese at 3.75mg. Copper and iodine are not itemised there, so they arrive under the general minerals entry in the ingredients instead.

Beef at 30% with chicken at 30%, and no other tray in the range pairs a red meat with a poultry. Fat converts to 28.0% of dry matter, the leanest reading of the four, and carbohydrate to 14.0%. It comes in the 395g tray, two of the six in the Mixed Selection Box.

£2.40 a kilo, that figure covering the Chicken, Turkey and Beef & Chicken trays. Trays come in 90g, 150g and 395g, with the two smaller sizes sold inside selection packs and the 395g tray also going into a mixed box.

As a guide, feeding a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition works out at around £1.72 a day on the Chicken and Beef & Chicken trays, and £1.75 on the Turkey. Both of those rest on about 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). That comes to roughly 718 to 730 grams a day.