Spotted Dick

Having a reputation for being a good cook and baker, I often take requests. Recently, I received one from my friend Barbara. It would seem that Barbara's father spent many a delightful year in English boarding schools. As a child, she remembered that he spoke fondly of of a favorite pudding, spotted dick. Recently a friend mentioned spotted dick and Barbara thought it would be an excellent birthday gift for him and she enlisted my help.

Here is a bit of Spotted Dick history...

Now we all know the British speak a form of English often known as "the Queen's English" which varies from American English. One big variation is the use of the word "pudding." For Americans "pudding" is that stuff we get from Bill Cosby and Jello. For the Brits a "pudding" or "pud" is a synonymous with our word, "dessert." So when a Brit tells you they have a lovely pudding, it might be a cake, or cookie or ice cream or spotted dick.

A spotted dick is a steamed suet pudding, studded with currants and boiled in a cloth.



The first true recipe for spotted dick can be found in 1850 in Alexis Soyer's, The Modern Housewife. However, identical recipes for the dish can be found as far back as the late 1600's.

The spotted part of the dish is easy see since it is "spotted" throughout with currants.

The "dick" is much debated. Some linguists believe that the word "dick" was a colloquial term for "pudding" at least four hundred years ago. Some feel it is a corruption of the word "pudding" which was oft pronounced "puddick" and thus, "dick." "Dick" was also used to mean a hard cheese and also a leather apron, among other uses. No one knows how "dick" became slang for "penis" but it seems to have originated around 1890 with the British army possibly because a riding whip was called a "dick" and the handle bore a resemblance to the male member. So it would seem that spotted dick didn't start to garner giggles until nearly a half-century after Soyer first published his recipe.

I set out to find an authentic recipe and I looked no farther than that bastion of English history, Upstairs, Downstairs. I knew that Mrs. Bridges would know better than anyone how to make a spotted dick. She did not disappoint and soon I had my recipe. Mrs Bridges notes that,

"Recently, the pudding has been accorded middle-class airs with raisins and sultana set in a light sponge."

She would not recognize such a confection as a true English spotted dick. After considerable boiling, the spotted dick is served with a bit of custard. For Barbara's present, I included a couple of cans of Devon Custard as I am a fine baker but not the best custard maker.



By all accounts, the present was a huge hit and yes, every dick joke out there was made. I heard they actually ate it, smothered in custard like perfect boarding school fare.

Shortcake

Food is major part of a child’s life. We are all victims of the food we ate as children and those flavors and traditions are inculcated into our very DNA.

There is a “famous” story about the Southern wife fussing over Easter dinner:

Every Easter, she buys a large, whole ham to cook. Every year she spends hours in her $100,000 stainless steel, professional kitchen cutting one end off her ham. Her husband asks her,

“Why do you cut the end off?”
She thinks for a minute and replies,
“Momma always cuts the end off.”

When the family begins to arrive for Easter dinner, the husband confronts her mother and asks her,

“Why do you cut the end off?”
She thinks for a minute and replies,
“Momma always cuts the end off.”

When his wife’s grandmother, finally arrives the husband says,

“MaMa, why do you cut the end off the ham?”
She thinks for a minute and replies,
“I never owned a pan big enough to cook it in.”

And still, we saw the end off the ham, cause it’s not Momma’s if the end is on it.

Recently, I had a big discussion about strawberry shortcake. Most of my friends had shortcake made from Bisquick, those hard, crusty drop biscuits, split open and drenched with strawberries and syrup.

As a child, I always wanted to have strawberry shortcake that included those garish yellow cakes from the grocery, baked with the shallow indentation to hold the strawberries. Of course, now, I would be appalled to eat those cakes. But, every once in a while, my Mother would buy those shortcake cakes and I was thrilled.

When I though of strawberry shortcakes, however, I remembered that we had a large raspberry patch behind our house, so most of the time we had raspberry shortcake. My great-aunt Ruth always made lighter than air, angle angel food cake for our shortcake base, and while my Mother never mastered angle angel food cake, there was a bakery in town that made angle angel food loafs. My mother would cut the loaf into sections and carve out a little box. She would fill it with raspberries and serve it with a sweetened, lightly beaten crème. I hadn’t though of those little raspberry boxes in years, but recently I was in Harris Teeter’s and in their bakery I found those same angle angel food loaves my Mother used for shortcake.

Clearly, raspberry shortcake was in my DNA. It is also very yummy!


UPDATE*****

Clearly SPELLING is not in my DNA. Anne, who kindly sends me an e-mails rather than commenting on the post reminds me it is ANGEL FOOD not ANGLE food. No matter what I do, I can't seem to differentiate those two words. In my brain they are identical. So if you go to Harris Teeter and ask them where the the ANGLE FOOD CAKE is they will just laugh at you.