Spotted Dick - Wikipedia

Traditional British dessert Spotted dick

Type	Pudding
Place of origin	United Kingdom
Main ingredients	Suet, dried fruit, flour, sugar, milk, baking powder

Spotted dick is a traditional British steamed pudding, historically made with suet and dried fruit (usually currants or raisins) and often served with custard.

Non-traditional variants include recipes that replace suet with other fats (such as butter), or that include eggs to make something similar to a sponge pudding or cake.[1]

Etymology

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Spotted is a reference to the dried fruit in the pudding (which resembles spots).[2] The word dick refers to pudding. In late 19th century Huddersfield, for instance, a glossary of local terms stated: "Dick, plain pudding. If with treacle sauce, treacle dick."[3] This sense of dick may be related to the word dough.[4] In the variant name spotted dog, dog is a variant form of dough.[5]

History

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The dish is first attested in Alexis Soyer's The Modern Housewife or, Ménagère, published in 1849,[6] in which he described a recipe for "Plum Bolster, or Spotted Dick – Roll out two pounds of paste [...] have some Smyrna raisins well washed".[7]

The name "spotted dog" first appeared in 1855, in C.M. Smith's "Working-men's Way in the World" where it was described as a "very marly species of plum-pudding". This name, along with "railway cake", is most common in Ireland where it is made more similar to a soda bread loaf with the addition of currants.[2]

The Pall Mall Gazette reported in 1892 that "the Kilburn Sisters [...] daily satisfied hundreds of dockers with soup and Spotted Dick".[3]

See also

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• Clootie dumpling, a similar Scottish traditional pudding
• Figgy duff, a bag pudding from Newfoundland
• Poutchine au sac, Métis bag pudding from Western Canada
• List of fruit dishes
• List of steamed foods

References

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1. ^ "Spotted Dick". British Food: A History. 2014-01-23. Retrieved 2022-03-10.
2. ^ a b "What's the origin of "spotted dick"?". The Straight Dope. 2002-08-27. Retrieved 2022-03-10.
3. ^ a b Ayto, John (2012). The Diner's Dictionary: Word Origins of Food and Drink. Oxford University Press. p. 349. ISBN 978-0199640249.
4. ^ Newman, Kevin (15 July 2021). Pond Puddings and Sussex Smokies: Sussex's Food and Drink. Amberley Publishing Limited. ISBN 978-1-4456-9707-9.
5. ^ Ashley, Leonard R. N. (1968). "Scoff Lore: An Introduction to British Words for Food and Drink". Names. 16 (3): 238–272. doi:10.1179/nam.1968.16.3.238.
6. ^ Eric Partridge (2003). The Routledge Dictionary of Historical Slang. Routledge. pp. 5085–. ISBN 978-1-135-79542-9.
7. ^ John Ayto (1994). A Gourmet's Guide: Food and Drink from A to Z. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-280025-1.

Bibliography

[edit] Wikimedia Commons has media related to Spotted dick.

External links

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• Alexis Soyer's original 1849 recipe for Spotted Dick

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v t e English cuisine
Roman times	Dishes Sausages
Middle Agesto 15th century	Exemplars Utilis Coquinario (c. 1300) The Forme of Cury (c. 1390) Dishes Apple pie Bacon Banbury cake Cheesecake Custard Game pie Gingerbread Kippers Mince pie Mortis Pasty Pease pudding Pie Pottage
16th century	Exemplars Richard Pynson (The Boke of Cokery, 1500) Thomas Dawson (The Good Huswifes Jewell, 1585) Dishes Black pudding Fruit fool Pancake Scones Syllabub Trifle (without jelly)
17th century	Exemplars Elinor Fettiplace (Receipt Book, 1604) Gervase Markham (The English Huswife, 1615) Robert May (The Accomplisht Cook, 1660) Hannah Woolley (The Queen-like Closet or Rich Cabinet 1670) John Evelyn (Acetaria: A Discourse of Sallets 1699) Kenelm Digby (The Closet Opened 1699) Dishes Battalia pie Currant bun Queen of Puddings Sponge cake Sussex pond pudding Sweet and sour Tea
18th century	Exemplars Mary Kettilby (A Collection of Above Three Hundred Receipts in Cookery, Physick and Surgery 1714) Mary Eales (Mrs Mary Eales's Receipts 1718) John Nott (The Cooks and Confectioners Dictionary, 1723) Eliza Smith (The Compleat Housewife 1727) Hannah Glasse (The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy 1747) Ann Cook (Professed Cookery, 1754) Martha Bradley (The British Housewife 1758) Primitive Cookery (1767) Elizabeth Raffald (The Experienced English Housekeeper 1769) Richard Briggs (The English Art of Cookery 1788) William Augustus Henderson (The Housekeeper's Instructor 1791) Dishes Bread and butter pudding Christmas pudding Chutney Curry Cottage or Shepherd's pie Eccles cake Jellied eels Jugged hare Ketchup Marmalade Parkin Piccalilli Pork pie Roast beef Sandwich Scouse Suet pudding Toad in the hole Trifle (with jelly) Welsh rarebit Yorkshire pudding
19th century	Exemplars Maria Rundell (A New System of Domestic Cookery 1806) Martha Brotherton (Vegetable Cookery 1812) Eliza Acton (Modern Cookery for Private Families 1845) Charles Elmé Francatelli (The Modern Cook 1846) Isabella Beeton (Mrs. Beeton's Book of Household Management 1861) Dishes Battenberg cake Bubble and squeak Cauliflower cheese Cobbler Devilled kidneys Eton mess Eve's pudding Faggots Fish and chips Full English breakfast HP Sauce Ice cream cone Jam roly-poly Lancashire hotpot Lardy cake Madeira cake Potted shrimps Sausage roll Steak and kidney pudding Summer pudding Windsor soup Worcestershire sauce
20th century	Exemplars Florence Petty Elizabeth David (A Book of Mediterranean Food 1950) Dorothy Hartley (Food in England 1954) Constance Spry Fanny Cradock Marguerite Patten Jane Grigson Delia Smith Rick Stein Nigel Slater Keith Floyd Marco Pierre White Nigella Lawson Jamie Oliver Fergus Henderson (The Whole Beast 1999) Gordon Ramsay Gary Rhodes Mary Berry Dishes Bakewell tart Beef Wellington Carrot cake Chicken tikka masala Coronation chicken Crumble Knickerbocker glory Ploughman's lunch Salad cream Steak Diane Sticky toffee pudding
21st century	Exemplars Heston Blumenthal (The Fat Duck) Lizzie Collingham Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall (River Cottage) Rachel Khoo Michel Roux Jr. (Le Gavroche) Antony Worrall Thompson Clarissa Dickson Wright (A History of English Food 2011) Dishes Coronation quiche Platinum Pudding
Related	List of English dishes List of English cheeses List of savoury puddings List of sweet puddings Rationing in the United Kingdom

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