Figgy Pudding Spam May Be The Weirdest Holiday Food Around

ACROSS AMERICA — This seems like it should be a bizarre “figgy-ment” of a satire writer’s imagination, but we swear on a stack of Charles Dickens novels this is true: Just in time for the holidays, Hormel Foods is introducing Figgy Pudding Spam.

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And you thought pumpkin spice Spam was weird. We have to wonder: Is this something Hormel, the maker of the canned meat product for the apocalypse, plans for every major holiday? If so, we can’t wait to see for what blows up for the 4th of July.

Apparently, consumers are clamoring for this product with every bit the enthusiasm of carolers harmonizing in the British carol “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” as they pledge, or perhaps threaten, to continue singing until they get their reward.

Now bring us some figgy pudding
Now bring us some figgy pudding
Now bring us some figgy pudding
And a cup of good cheer

We won't go until we get some
We won't go until we get some
We won't go until we get some
So bring it right here

Hormel did its research, conducting a survey to determine a market for the concoction. First, it found that only 69 percent of U.S. consumers actually know what figgy pudding is. Also, an obvious advantage for anyone dressing canned meat as figgy pudding, only 17 percent have ever eaten it.

For the 30 percent of people without a clue as to what figgy pudding is: It originated in 14th-century Britain. The concoction of meat, root vegetables, and figs and other dried fruits was boiled for hours or days, and preserved in a sheep stomach for sustenance through the winter, according to Taste of Home.

In the 15th century, grains were added to make it a porridge, and as fruits — particularly raisins and currants — became more plentiful in the 16th century, plum pudding went from being savory to sweet.

That explains what figgy pudding is, but not why Hormel Spamified it.

We’re in the thick of the holiday season, and it seems we’re all caught up in feelings of nostalgia and warmth. Two in three U.S. consumers want to create the holiday magic of their favorite childhood memories, the Spam survey found.

Extrapolating from the survey, there you are, conjuring up images of Tiny Tim’s table in Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol,” craving a big serving of plum pudding. Bring us some figgy pudding, and bring it right here, you could say.

Spam made this easy. Spam itself is easy. Though maligned as a mystery meat — unfairly so, Hormel says — it’s made of just six ingredients: pork with ham meat added (that counts as one), salt, water, potato starch, sugar, and sodium nitrite, which preserves it.

By spicing it with cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, allspice and cloves, fig and orange flavors, and other “popular winter flavor profiles,” it became something else entirely.

It’s pretty terrible, food writer Emily Heil wrote for The Washington Post after giving it a fair try.

“ … You could just pitch the tin directly in the trash, which is where it belongs, I ultimately determined after powering through a few bites,” she wrote.

Heather Martin, a correspondent for the food section of NBC’s “Today” show, had a slightly better impression, calling it “something of a surprise.”

Wait! That’s not all, of course.

Spam has created a video, “We Wish You A Figgy Christmas.” There’s a lot going on in this video, with a full cast that includes Santa, reindeer, elves, a yeti and a “holiday hog” we presume escaped being shipped off to market and, thus, eventually becoming Spam.

They all inside a snow globe, trying to explain what figgy pudding is, but they’re distracted by the Spam.

Aren’t we all, though?