Spotted dick is a traditional British pudding made from mutton fat mixed with other ingredients, such as baking soda, flour, molasses, corn syrup, or nutmeg. You add raisins or other bits of dried fruit to this dough and you have “spots.” The dish is steamed, boiled, or, as in the recipe below, baked, and served with custard sauce.
Like Scottish haggis, Spotted Dick is kind of a joke food, especially to Americans. Like haggis, you can also find Spotted Dick in a can (Heinz), making it a not infrequent gag gift (again, especially for Americans). Unlike haggis, though, in this American’s opinion, Spotted Dick is really quite delicious.
Why such an unappetizing name, then? “Dick” has been described as an abbreviation for dictionary, a policeman, an apron, a riding whip, a corruption of the “ding” in pudding or “dough,” a referral to the German dich (“thick or viscous”), and, lest we avoid it, male genitalia. Americans will usually most certainly turn up their noses at ordering something with that last meaning. After all, at least US restaurants offering bulls’ testicles have the decency to label them Rocky Mountain “oysters.”
But the Spotted Dick I ordered recently was really just a sweet little spice cake with lots of raisins. As I happen to really like spice cake and raisins, I was enthusiastic about this dish at the friendly King Edward Restaurant by the sea in Weymouth. The waitress took my order with nary a smirk.
The “dick” itself was a lovely, hot-out-of-the-oven spice cake baked in a small mold, drizzled with caramel sauce, and accompanied with a pitcher of creamy, yellow custard. I lovingly poured custard all over the dick.
I could have further forced the whole issue by ordering Spotted Dick at Moby Dick’s, a pub that’s down the street from the King Edward. But back home in Moab, Utah, they couldn’t even name a new mountain bike trail “Moby Dick” (in reference to the nearby Whale Rock formation) because of the innuendo. Here are the ingredients and directions if you’d like to try this at home.
Ingredients
1 ¼ cups unsalted butter ½ tsp salt
1 ½ cups sugar 1 cup sour cream
2 whole eggs 1 cup currants
3 egg yolks ¼ cup sherry
2 tsp vanilla extract ¼ cup rum
2 ½ cups flour icing [powdered?] sugar
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
Directions
1. Preheat oven to 350 °F.
2. Line two 8” round pans with parchment (or grease with butter)
3. In a medium bowl, combine flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt. Set aside.
4. In a small bowl, soak currants in the sherry and rum. Set aside.
5. In a stand mixer, cream the butter and sugar.
6. Add eggs, egg yolks, and vanilla. Once combined, then add flour mixture and sour cream.
7. Remove bowl from stand mixer and fold in soaked currants.
8. Fill pans with batter and bake for 30–40 minutes. Check after 30 minutes with a toothpick.
9. Cool and sprinkle with powdered sugar if desired. Serve with custard.
I’m not at home to bake one of these, but every forkful that evening at the King Edward was cinnamon-and-nutmeggy, sweet, and succulent. By whatever name, you can’t really go too wrong with a custard-smothered slice of cake.
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