The British dessert combining suet pastry with dried fruit and traditionally served with custard is spotted dick.
Spotted dick is a steamed suet pudding containing dried fruit, especially currants or raisins. The “spots” refer to the fruit visible in the pale pudding. Custard is the classic accompaniment, although cream or a sweet sauce may also be served.
The dessert appears in nineteenth-century British cookery. “Dick” is an old dialect word connected with pudding, and historical recipes used several spellings and names. The term therefore describes a traditional steamed pudding rather than an unusual modern ingredient.
Spotted dick is sometimes confused with jam roly-poly, another suet-based British pudding. Jam roly-poly is rolled around jam, whereas spotted dick is defined by dried fruit distributed through the dough. Both belong to the older British steamed-pudding tradition.