Spotted Dog

Spotted Dog, also called curnie cake or railway cake, is a “sweet cake,” a sweetened, fruited version of a traditional soda bread. In Irish Traditional Cooking, Darina Allen says that it was made as a treat for Sundays, special occasions, and for times “when the men were working particularly hard in the fields.” The handfuls of currants, raisins, or addition of sugar and an egg, were a reward that resulted in a richer bread. Georgina Campbell calls fruit soda bread “the quintessential tea bread of Northern Ireland.”

While the term “curnie cakes” were only found in the context of Allen in the late 1990s and 2000s, I did find an advertisement for railway cakes (“baked at every station!”) in a 1970 issue of Kilkenny People, as well as a reference to them in the Holly Bough in 2009: “My grandmother would also bake ‘currant cakes’ (also called railway cakes) if dried fruit was available. Her cousin, a Catholic nun nursing in Africa, often posted parcels of currants, sultanas and raisins to her during the Emergency.”

“Spotted Dog,” most likely a reference to the dried fruit strewn throughout the cake, seems to be the most common of the three, an example being a mention of “Plain Soda Fruit Cake (Spotted Dog)” in the Nenagh Guardian in 1965.

Spotted Dog Recipe

From Irish Traditional Cooking. To make this vegan, used plant-based butter and milk.

INGREDIENTS

4 cups all-purpose flour

1 – 2 tablespoons sugar

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon sifted baking soda

¾ cup raisins, currants, or sultanas

1 ¼ to 1 ⅓ cups sour milk or buttermilk

optional: ½ stick butter , ¼ cup mixed peel, 1 egg

METHOD

1. Preheat oven to 450°F/230°C.

2. Sieve dry ingredients and mix in fruit. Pour milk (and egg if using) into a well in the center.

3. Gently and quickly combine, adding milk if needed. After dough comes together, turn out and knead lightly.

4. Form a round and score in quadrants. Bake for 15 minutes, reduce temperature to 400°F/200°C and bake for an additional 30 minutes. Loaf should sound hollow when tapped.