Spotted Dick

This is a pudding for the dark end of the year. November, December, January, the months when it gets dark at four and the radiators click on in the afternoon and you start wanting things that sit heavily in a bowl. A summer kitchen has no use for spotted dick. A winter kitchen can't really do without it.

I know the name makes people laugh. It has made people laugh for about two hundred years, and it will carry on making people laugh, and that's fine. But the pudding itself is entirely serious. Suet, flour, sugar, currants, a little lemon zest to lift it, milk to bring it together. Steamed slowly in a basin until the kitchen smells warm and sweet and faintly of childhood, even if it wasn't yours. We're only making dinner. We're only making pudding. It's the same thing.

The custard isn't optional. Spotted dick without custard is a plain slice of sweetened bread, and that's not what we came here for. Make your own if you have the time and the patience. Use a good bought one if you don't. No one has ever turned down a second helping because the custard came from a carton.

I wrote it down in the notebook the first time I made it, years ago now: suet, currants, lemon, rain. Four words. It's never needed more than that.