This week, Value for Money compares five popular brands of Caesar salad dressing.

Cardini's Original Caesar Dressing

€2.76 for 350ml, €7.89 per litre

Highs:This brand, the cheapest we found, boasts a link to the inventor of the classic dressing, Caesar Cardini, who started serving this (well, perhaps not this actual jar) in his Tijuana restaurant in 1924. It is very sharp, tangy and strangely addictive. It's heavily flecked with herbs and its consistency is on the thin side, so we'd expect a small dollop to go a long way. It has a long list of harmless looking ingredients - including anchovies - although based on our extensive research (OK, looking it up online), Caesar never used anchovies in his dressing, a fact which made us query the accuracy of the maker's claims.

Lows: It might be a little too salty for some tastes, although we quite liked that, and its fairly strong flavour might overpower some of the more delicate flavours in a salad.

Verdict: The original but not the best

Star rating: ***

€2.41 for 250ml, €9.64 per litre

Highs: While this tastes perfectly pleasant, what really gives it an edge over the competition is the feelgood factor Newman adds to all his products. All the profits go to charity, so if you want to donate effortlessly, this is the one for you. It's thick and creamy, as you might have guessed from its name, and it's just the right consistency for sticking resolutely to all your salad leaves. It's an anchovy-free zone which makes it suitable for vegetarians, and is quite delicately flavoured.

Lows: A little too delicately flavoured, and we found ourselves wishing it was just a bit more robust. It was also on the pricey side, although given its charitable status we're not sure if we should complain about that.

Verdict: A nice charity case

Star rating: ****

€1.99 for 235ml, €8.47 per litre

Highs: Unsurprisingly, given where it has come from, this dressing is the most reminiscent of a traditional mayonnaise - and a very garlicky one at that. It is so garlicky that you could mistake it for a Spanish alioli sauce. There are tiny bits of mildly crunchy onion and garlic pieces in the mix which was something of a surprise. It comes with a handy pouring spout and while we're not sure this is what you want to be drowning your salad in, it tastes surprisingly pleasant in a sandwich - kind of like mayonnaise, really.

Lows: It has the most processed flavour of the lot and could make a healthy lunch a little less healthy. Amongst the ingredients are anchovies, which the makers explain is fish - thanks for clearing that up, Hellmann's, and no we don't feel even slightly patronised.

Verdict: Better for sarnies than salads.

Star rating: **

€2.20 for 260ml, €8.47 per litre

Highs: Some of the Tesco Finest products are really good indeed - and this is most certainly one of them. It is sweet and creamy and very, very peppery. It also has a pleasing cheesiness to it and is one of the few recipes we came across to list parmesan as one of the ingredients - most of the others settle for an unspecified hard Italian cheese. It also comes with a nice garlic hit (1.5 per cent of this is made up of fresh garlic, apparently).

Lows: Be warned that all that garlic in here does linger a bit, so do take care if you fancy kissing a stranger after eating a salad doused in this.

Verdict: Top notch

Star rating: ****

€2.59 for 245ml, €10.58 per litre

Highs: This scores bonus points for being the only Irish dressing we came across. It is light and fresh and very smooth. It is also remarkably cheesy, and is made with 9 per cent Grana Padano cheese. It has a worryingly long ingredient list, although on closer inspection it all looked pretty good to us. It is comparatively low in salt and all the flavours coalesce well without any one of them dominating proceedings.

Lows: We bought this at the end of April in our local Tesco and when we got it home were alarmed to see its best before date was May 2nd - either it has a very short shelf life (which we very much doubt) or Tesco was getting rid of a batch. It was also the most expensive of the dressings we came across, although not by a huge margin.

Verdict: Locally produced and lovely

Star rating: *****