Spotted dick comes in a can. Courtesy bag not included.Photo by Kenneth Rosen

Spotted dick is a steamed suet pudding that contains currants and is, usually, served with custard. Maybe that’s where I went wrong in this taste test: no custard.

You might be familiar with this treat from “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.” But, if you were like me and never noticed it on-screen at Hogwarts, you might have seen it at Fancy Parkers on Drayton Street.

The pricy, quasi-Spam container canned by Heinz, the same company that makes Heinz Tomato Ketchup, can be found for $6.69 in any canned food aisle. Intrigued by the name, our editor-in-chief scooped up the can of 910-calorie pudding and placed it in my mailbox along with a courtesy barf bag.

The “sponge pudding” contains: water, sugar, wheat flour, raisins, partially hydrogenated canola and palm oils, nonfat dry milk, partially inverted sugar cane syrup, leaveners, egg whites, salt, spices and spice extractives, natural flavors. This list reminded me of something I’d seen on a Fancy Feast can. But, the only difference between wet cat food and spotted dick is that cat food smells better.

I started gagging from the stench even before following the instructions to heat it for two minutes. When the microwave bell dinged, the smell had worsened. Like a mixture of hard clay and fruit-infused turpentine the smell was almost unbearable.

“It’s smells salty … I don’t know,” one staff member said.

I like the usual: Vanilla and chocolate. But this spotted dick is anything but pudding. In fact, back to Fancy Feast, it’s more similar to cat food than it is anything else. Yet, cat food is soft and can’t be rolled into a firm ball.

The blob of mush wiggles with the slightest of touches and is similar to gelatin. Except, if you pressed a finger into gelatin you would make a mark, with Heinz’s spotted dick, it would rise again like memory foam.

I don’t know if it has anything to do with the name itself, but I gagged every time I put a spoonful in my mouth. I tried mixing it with coffee. It’ll soften the blow, I thought. It didn’t.

I made it as far as I could through the 9.4 ounce can. Heniz’s spotted dick, alone, is not worth your money. Maybe putting some custard on my spotted dick would make all the difference.