One evening this week, I was perusing the goods in my local grocery store aisle and stopped in front of a canned item that proclaimed on the label,  Spotted Dick.  My eyes widened and I had to pick up the can and scrutinize it.  Just what the Sam Hill was spotted dick?  The image that popped into my mind was an absurd and fairly gross one.    Could there possibly be any demand for a can of spotted dick?

I had to go get my husband, my friend Lottie, and her son to come and see what I had found in one of the aisles of my Rainbow Fresh grocery store.  We all had a raucous laugh over the canned offering of spotted dick!

As it turns out, spotted dick is an English pudding, having even earned mention in one of the Harry Potter books.  I found that piece of trivia here.   There are many, many recipes available on the interweb for spotted dick.  Here is one of them: 

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2 oz plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 teaspoon mixed spice
pinch of salt
2 oz shredded suet
1 oz white or brown sugar
4 oz currants
2 oz fresh breadcrumbs
1 egg, beaten
4-5 tbsp milk

 

Butter a 1.5 pint pudding basin. Sift the flour, baking powder, spice and salt into a mixing bowl and mix in the suet, sugar, fruit and bread- crumbs. Stir in the egg and sufficient milk to produce a soft consistency that drops off the spoon in 5 seconds.Turn the mixture into the pudding basin, which should be two-thirds full. Cover with greased foil or a snap-on lid (the plastic container from a 2 lb Christmas pudding is worth saving for this purpose.) Steam for 2 to 2.5 hours. When cooked, remove the cover and allow the pudding to shrink slightly, then cover the basin with a hot serving plate, hold it firmly and invert. Lift off the basin to leave the pudding on the plate.