FOOD - About Spotted Dick

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FOX

Clever Dicks Try to End a Spot of Embarrassment

Monday, August 27, 2001 BY Tim Reid

LONDON — Spotted dick, the Victorian suet pudding whose name has provided sniggers for generations of schoolboys, is being renamed after an outbreak of prudishness.

Housewives are said to have become so embarrassed at the prospect of asking for the dessert that Tesco is to call it Spotted Richard.

After watching helplessly as sales figures dropped, the supermarket surveyed hundreds of female shoppers to discover the reason. They still loved the taste of spotted dick, they said, but found the name too saucy.

In an age where incestuous kisses on TV's EastEnders barely elicit a flushed neck, it is perhaps refreshing that a double entendre can still produce excruciating titters. "Our research showed that people are actually embarrassed by the name," a Tesco spokesman said. "Can you imagine a lady going up to a male assistant and asking where she can find a spotted dick?"

What about a nice big tart? "Tarts? No, we don’t seem to have a problem with tarts," the spokesman added. "We noticed that all our traditional puddings were selling very well — apple pies, crumbles — but for some reason sales of spotted dick were dropping off. So we carried out some taste tests and they all said they loved it, it was just the name. We hope we will ease customer embarrassment and increase sales."

Officials at the Pudding Club, which promotes traditional British desserts, were left choking on their custard creams. "We are absolutely outraged by this," said Simon Coombe, the club's chief taster. "Spotted dick has always been spotted dick and there is no reason to change that. I have no intention whatsoever of following this ridiculous example and will continue to use the name spotted dick."

There is no clear answer as to how the pudding got its name. One school of thought is that the finished pudding looks like a spotty dog, and in the 19th century dogs were often called Dick. In Lobscouse and Spotted Dog, the cookery book based on the Jack Aubrey naval stories, it is suggested that "dick," "duff" and "dog" in names of puddings are variants of "dough."

-- Anonymous, August 27, 2001

Answers

A rose by any other name....

-- Anonymous, August 27, 2001

it would probably sell well in the Castro area of San Francisco, or Miami Beach.

What are the first three things to consider in business?

Location Location Location

-- Anonymous, August 28, 2001


I have observed that men don't have problems asking for tarts, or crumpet.

-- Anonymous, August 30, 2001

thread drift thread drift thread drift

Stopped at a friend's shop the other day and found him stalking around with a fly swatter.

When I asked if he was getting any flies, he answered, "Yeah, 3 males and 2 females."

Curious, I inquired as to how he could tell the difference.

He answered, "3 were on a beer can and 2 were on the phone."

-- Anonymous, August 30, 2001


NatlReview

Anyone for Spotted Richard? Home sweet home.

Mr. Derbyshire is also an NR contributing editor August 30, 2001 2:10 p.m. It is ten weary years since I left England's shores In a far distant country to roam. How I long to return to my own native land! - To my friends and the old folks at home. — "The Miner's Dream of Home"

obert Browning, Rupert Brooke, and Will Godwin's Australian miner notwithstanding, I don't think English people are much prone to homesickness. Quite a large number of English expatriates are glad to be out of the place. They will tell you what the sailor told George Borrow in Lavengro: "England was a hard mother to me, as she has proved to many." Now, I'm not in that category myself. I have many fond memories of England, and no complaints. I don't think I have ever shed a tear for the Ould Sod, though. I'm not the type — not sentimental at all. There are, though, occasional moments when I feel a lump in my throat. Certain hymns; a sighting of the dear old Queen on TV news (you may say what you like about the rest of the Windsors, I'll not hear a word against Betty); books about the Great War (as the men of my father's generation called it, as it will always be in my mind)... A few scattered things like this, now and again, catching me in just the right mood, remind me that a country, especially one you were born and raised in, is not just a splotch of color on a map. Well, I had one of these moments the other day, when a reader sent me a clip from the Fox News website. The news item was about spotted dick; and thinking of spotted dick, I sank into nostalgia.

Last night as I slumbered I had a strange dream. It seemed to bring distant things near. I dreamed of old England, the land of my birth - To the hearts of her sons ever dear.

Spotted dick, I had better explain, is an English dessert: a cylinder of dense spongy stuff (hey, I'm no cook, just a consumer) with raisins or sultanas imbedded in it. The raisins make it "spotted"; "dick" is, I think, an ancient corruption of the word "dough." The story on Fox is that England's biggest supermarket chain — which is also, incidentally, an ex-employer of mine — is going to stop calling this wonderful confection "spotted dick" because people are embarrassed to ask for it. With that dull-witted predictability that makes one think the European Commission must be behind this somewhere, the stores will henceforth label this material "spotted richard."

Reading this, I was at once back in my childhood, among the glories of English cuisine. It is a misconception, though apparently a universal one, that the English are lousy cooks. Well, speak as you find: I have never eaten food as varied, well prepared, and nourishing as that I ate growing up in an ordinary working-class English household. The truth of the matter is that English food is wonderful, but you have to live in an English family to know this. We are not lousy cooks; we are merely lousy restaurateurs. (Note to the editor, and to all TV newspersons: THERE IS NO "N" IN THAT WORD, FOR CRYING OUT LOUD.) "English restaurant" is almost an oxymoron; though I should add that this is less true now than when I was growing up. At home, though, we eat like kings. Our food has far more variety than American food mainly because we are willing to eat things that you won't even look at. There is, for example, no part of any edible animal that can't be made into an English dish. Stuffed sheep's heart: brains on toast: calf heel jelly: pig's trotters: chitlings: tripe and onions: oxtail soup: tongue: blood pudding: devilled kidneys: sweetbreads (which is some gland or other): donkey dong. All right, I made that last one up, but the others are real. You dull Yanks with your boring prime cuts — eat your hearts out (preferably stuffed).

But it is in the matter of desserts that the culinary genius of England takes wing and soars above the Aσnian mount. How I miss those English desserts of my childhood! Bakewell tart! Queen of puddings! Rhubarb crumble! Gooseberry fool! Apple turnover! Treacle sponge! Treacle tart (a completely different thing)! Jam Roly-poly! Bread and butter pudding! Blancmange! Trifle! Spotted dick! The pies and tarts all smothered in thick hot custard! Now I think I am going to cry. You simply can't get this stuff here, except occasionally, by chance, and usually choked with cinnamon or buried under a deliquescing mound of that filthy "cream topping" that sprays out of a can.

Chorus: I saw the old homestead and faces I love, I saw England's valleys and dells. And I listened with joy, As I did when a boy, To the sound of the old village bells.

Now, don't get me wrong. The U.S.A. is a great country. I'm glad to be here; I look forward to becoming a citizen; and I shall try my best to be a good citizen. But let's face it, there are some things Americans just can't do worth a damn, and dessert is up there at the top of the list. This nation, so great and admirable in so many ways, is a dessert desert. Ice cream, "fruit salad," cheesecake — that's the entire repertoire in 90 percent of your eating establishments, and in your homes too, so far as I can judge. Sometimes, in very up-market places, you get offered something called "chocolate mousse." This is rare, though — so rare than most Americans think mousse is stuff you put on your hair. With American dessert mousse, you might as well; it sure isn't fit to eat. American cakes are pathetic. I worked in New York offices for some years, and when a birthday came around in the department a cake would be purchased. Frequently these were just large slabs of ice cream. On other occasions they were weightless, tasteless, textureless masses of sponge, smeared with some oily white slime that always made me think of the stuff I found accumulated in my belly button when, after three months' imprisonment, I was cut free from a full-torso plaster cast I'd had to wear for a back problem. (Look, I'd been doing my best to maintain my normal high standards of personal hygiene. You try taking a shower while encased in plaster from crotch to clavicles.)

Reader, I have traveled all over this world (cue banjo here) and have found something to like and admire in every place I have been — in America most of all, the one country where the flame of liberty still gutters faintly in the rising gales of bureaucratism, legalism, corporatism, and globalism. Yet there are times when I would abandon everything I have and jump on a plane back to London for just one mouthful of warm spotted dick dripping with custard.

Once more in the fireplace the oak log burned bright, And I promised no more would I roam. I sat in the old vacant chair by the hearth, And we sang that dear song "Home Sweet Home."

Thinly disguised plug for my new novel. In my column last Thursday I passed some comments on the state of modern literary fiction. Samples: "I do not read much current Lit. Fic., except when paid to. My impression is that not much of it is any good ... I can't see much that is Lit. Fic. about Fire from the Sun... None of the characters is an angel, a space alien, or a coprophagic dwarf... Magic realism? I shall die happy if I can believe I have got real realism right..." I had not, at the time I wrote that, read B.R. Myers' piece on current fiction in the July/August Atlantic Monthly. A kind reader pointed it out to me. Myers is way better read than I am in the Lit. Fic. of our time, but his conclusions agree pretty well with mine. Like me, he believes that the emperor has no, or at any rate very few, clothes: that most of the "fine writing" gushed over in the pages of the New York Times Book Review is pretentious crap. It's an excellent article, and I recommend it to you without reservation.

-- Anonymous, August 30, 2001



SPOTTED DICK Makes 6-7 helpings 300g plain flour [all-purpose]
150g caster sugar [regular sugar will do]
1/2 (2.5 ml) spoon salt
2 (5ml) spoons baking powder
150g shredded suet* 150g chopped currants
cold milk
flour for dusting
Sift the flour, sugar, salt, and baking powder together. Add the suet*,chopped currants, and enough cold milk to make a soft but not sticky dough. Shape into a roll. Lay the dough on a scalded, well-floured pudding cloth [cotton dish towel will do] and roll up loosely. Tie up the ends of the cloth. Put into a saucepan of fast-boiling water, reduce the heat, and simmer for 2 to 2 1/2 hours. Drain well and unwrap. Slice and serve with any custard or sweet sauce, or with warmed golden syrup [try honey or maple syrup] and cream. *Suet. This can be bought in a sort of dessicated, shredded form in UK shops. There are two substitutes that I know of. One is to ask the butcher for some beef suet, preferably that from around the kidney. He will look at you funny, get a chunk, wrap it up and probably tell you no charge. You then grate this (large holes) and substitute it. You can also freeze some butter and VERY QUICKLY grate it, then pop it back in the freezer for some more chilling. Have everything ready and add this next to last, right before the milk. Get the pudding in the boiling water immediately. The idea is that suet has a high melting point so that by the time it melts, the surrounding ingredients have already solidified, thus a light, fluffy, holey texture is achieved.

-- Anonymous, August 30, 2001

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