Spotted dick is a British steamed suet pudding containing dried fruit (usually currants or raisins) commonly served with custard. Spotted refers to the dried fruit (which resemble spots) and dick may be a contraction or corruption of the word pudding (from the last syllable) or possibly a corruption of the word dough or dog, as "spotted dog" is another name for the same dish with the use of plums rather than currants. Another explanation offered for the word "dick" is that is the German word for "thick."
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the earliest documented reference is a recipe for "Plum Bolster, or Spotted Dick", in Alexis Soyer's The modern Housewife or ménagère (1849).
Hospital managers at Gloucestershire NHS Trust (in 2001) and the catering staff at Flintshire County Council (in 2009) renamed the pudding Spotted Richard on menus because of the use of the word dick in the original name, a common dysphemism for male genitalia in the English language. Gloucestershire NHS Trust restored the original name in 2002. Flintshire County Council reversed their renaming after a few weeks.
Famous quotes containing the words spotted and/or dick:
“But I go with my friend to the shore of our little river, and with one stroke of the paddle, I leave the village politics and personalities, yes, and the world of villages and personalities behind, and pass into a delicate realm of sunset and moonlight, too bright almost for spotted man to enter without novitiate and probation.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Science fiction writers, I am sorry to say, really do not know anything. We can’t talk about science, because our knowledge of it is limited and unofficial, and usually our fiction is dreadful.”
—Philip K. Dick (1928–1982)