Guess this much-stirred, sweetly sticky British dish

Here’s how my Foodie Fiction challenges work: I describe a dish in delectable detail that comes straight off the pages of a book. You fire up your memory or just take a wild guess and tweet the answer to me, @KerriMPR.
While my other Foodie Fictions have come from classics, this one is unusual: It’s a real recipe that appeared in a cookbook and in the contemporary historical novel that is all about the food the Brits ate in Victorian England.

If you haven’t read this novel that made a lot of bestseller lists, you’ll be hungry for it by the time I’m finished.

OK, here are your delicious clues:

This dish is often made only once a year and the reason why is in the title of the recipe.

This dish combines ingredients like candied peel, cognac, sultanas – which are raisins made from green grapes – and suet.

This dish requires a lot of patient stirring and simmering.

This dish can hide a little prize like a coin or a costume jewel.

And this dish can be made ahead of time and stored away – dark and cool – for the big day.

The novel that this dish appears in is based on a real woman who transformed what the British make in their own kitchens. But she isn’t a natural cook – indeed she turns to “cookery” out of necessity when her writing career founders and recruits a young household maid who has an impeccable if uneducated palate.

The author says she finally began to write this woman’s story when she whipped up some cakes and cookies from the real-life cookbook and brought them to a talk she was giving at her local library. Her audience was entranced.

So, can you guess this much-stirred and long-simmered sweetly sticky dish? And do you know which novel it appears in?

If you do, tweet me @KerriMPR.

Coming up next on The Thread: Why there are more Americans who are convinced that the Earth is flat than you’d ever believe!

— Kerri Miller | MPR News