“Everything you’ve been through … is just an hors d’oeuvre,” Matt Preston declared at the opening of MasterChef’s season seven grand finale … part two.

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He wasn’t wrong. At more than two-and-a-half hours long, it was a veritable degustation of television, ending in Billie McKay’s victory.

The 24-year-old from Bowraville, NSW, even scored the foodie golden ticket: a job offer from Heston Blumenthal to work at his famed restaurant, The Fat Duck.

Fan accusations of ‘favouritism’ on social media

This season’s finale saw the serene restaurant manager face off with Queensland dessert queen Georgia Barnes over three increasingly intense challenges.

Georgia was a surprise entrant into the grand final after she struggled through the service challenge and had an emotional meltdown in Sunday night’s final.

Fans on social media were quick to accuse the judges of favouring the Queenslander because she was “more marketable” than eliminated WA bartender Jessica Arnott.

Gary Mehigan took to Twitter to diplomatically defend himself and fellow judges George Calombaris and Matt Preston.

“Don’t forget that we give balanced advice & the same advice to all the contestants, whether it makes the cut is another thing,” Gary wrote.

From the moment Georgia miraculously managed to make sweet pasta a hit (despite Gary’s insistence he hated the concept), Twitter was ablaze with accusations of favouritism.

The dessert to end all desserts

Touted as the “toughest grand finale ever planned” for “the greatest” crop of cooks the show has ever seen, it was a given Ten had to wrangle a big name to cap it all off.

They found it in foodie messiah Heston Blumenthal, who charges $500 a meal.

Heston made the two unsuspecting finalists recreate his 55-stage grape-inspired botrytis cinerea dish that closely resembled a spaceship but was more scientifically complex.

Georgia cried a couple of times, George shouted a lot and Billie remained unnervingly calm throughout bar one emotional run-in with an elusive sugar ball.

Despite trailing by four points, Billie’s impressive ability to pull together the 17-piece dessert in a mere five hours got her over the line to beat Georgia 82 points to 80.

Her strength under pressure also scored her a little more than the requisite prize pool – including $250,000, an Alfa Romeo and a monthly column with Delicious magazine – with Heston requesting her calm demeanour in his own fabled kitchen.

A television stalwart

The show’s dramatic conclusion capped off a season that surpassed expectations for the show.

Back in May, the new series debuted to an audience of 1.2 million viewers across the capitals.

Since then, it’s managed to more or less keep up the numbers at a time when other foodie shows are all becoming a bit stale.

The first instalment of the grand finale pulled 1.389 million viewers on Sunday night, coming in third behind Nine’s nightly news and hit reality series The Voice.

This is an impressive feat for a show in its seventh season which is largely devoid of scandal, sob stories, curveballs or in-fighting.

Unlike Seven’s My Kitchen Rules, which typically relies on the antics of its kooky contestants to sell each episode, MasterChef is all about the food – no frills to be found anywhere but the desserts.

On Tuesday this week, Channels Seven and Nine will make a bid for the cook-off crown with their new offerings: Restaurant Revolution and The Hotplate respectively.

Whether audiences will embrace these iterations of shows we’ve already watched in other forms is yet to be seen. But one thing is clear: a formula as flawless as MasterChef’s is hard to replicate.