Spotted Dick

Name: Spotted Dick
Total time: 2 h
Yield: 6 servings
Cuisine: British
Ingredients: Plain flour; Light cream cheese; 2 medium eggs; Skimmed milk powder; Semi-skimmed milk; Caster sugar; Raisins; Currants; Salt; Zest of 1 lemon

288 kcal a serving, against 410 for the traditional version. That is 122 kcal off, or 30%, with 7.9g of protein. Serves 6. 2 hours.

What the traditional version is

Traditional Spotted Dick is a suet pastry bulked with raisins and currants, rolled up and steamed for nearly two hours.

What changed, and what each change costs

Suet to half-fat cream cheese and skimmed milk powder

Suet's the key to the soft crumb, but it's nearly pure beef fat. Swapping half the fat for light cream cheese and stirring in some skimmed milk powder keeps it moist.

What it costs you. You lose the classic melting suet texture and get something closer to a rich tea bread. The top crust goes a bit rubbery around the edges. Don't expect heritage pudding: you're trading away the thing that made it famous.

Extra whole eggs and skimmed milk for some of the dairy

Eggs bring structure and a hit of protein, while skimmed milk keeps some softness. It also means you actually get a bit of lift, so it isn't just a steamed doorstop.

What it costs you. There's a faint egginess you don't get in the original. The crumb is a bit tighter, but it holds the slice together. If you want authenticity, complain quietly while you eat your second helping.

Plain flour for a higher proportion of fruit and less flour overall

Cutting the flour drops some starch and lets you keep a decent helping of fruit, which is the fake 'spotted' part. The pudding stays sweet without making it a lump of cake.

What it costs you. It flies closer to a summer pudding than a dense winter one. That means more chew and less of the classic fluff, but you won't miss that as much as you might expect.

Butter out entirely

Suet provides all the fat in the traditional. Here, cream cheese covers the texture, so there's no point in adding more. That gets you the biggest calorie drop.

What it costs you. You lose the beefy notes and some richness. It isn't fooling anyone, but it means you can have pudding after a meal without regretting it in the shower.

What goes in it

The ingredients, without the quantities. The weights are what the figures below are computed from, and they are in the book.

Plain flour
Light cream cheese
2 medium eggs
Skimmed milk powder
Semi-skimmed milk
Caster sugar
Raisins
Currants
Salt
Zest of 1 lemon

How it starts

Grease a 1-litre pudding basin, and cut a disc of baking paper to fit the bottom.
Tip the flour, skimmed milk powder, salt and sugar into a large bowl.
Add the eggs and most of the milk, plus the lemon zest and juice.

The rest of the method, and every weight, is in Authentic-ish British.

The numbers

Per serving	Traditional	Lightened
Calories	410	288
Protein	7.1g	7.9g
Fat	15.7g	4.3g
Saturated fat	9.3g	2g
Carbohydrate	62.1g	56.2g
Protein per 100 kcal	1.7g	2.7g

Every figure is computed from the recipe's own weighed ingredient list against public food composition databases. The appendix in Authentic-ish British prints the exact database row used for each ingredient, so any number here can be checked. How every number is computed sets out the method.

Allergens. eggs, gluten, milk, sulphites.

The method is in the book

No one who grew up on sponge puddings will be fooled. Suet is the first and last word in the real thing, and this has lost that mystery ingredient: beef fat. But it does still work as a pudding. There's plenty of fruit, the slice holds together, and you can drown it in custard without it collapsing straight away. The texture is cakier, and the flavour's a little sharper, but I'd rather eat a second helping of this than stare mournfully at a salad while everyone else eats actual Spotted Dick. If you want nostalgia, don't compromise - just have a real slice now and then. If you want a pudding after a weeknight dinner and would rather not feel like you swallowed an anvil, this will do the job. Still, if anyone claims it's just as good as the original, they're lying with a straight face.

The quantities and the method for this dish are in Authentic-ish British, along with 56 more. Buy the paperback