Duff
A Bahamian boiled pudding filled with spiced dough and fruit
Duff is a traditional Bahamian boiled dessert made by folding fruit, especially guava, into spiced dough. The sweet roll is prepared with rum, butter, eggs, and aromatic spices before being sliced and served with a sauce.
- Guava is the most popular fruit used inside Bahamian duff.
- The dessert is shaped in dough and boiled rather than baked.
- Duff is seasoned with rum, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, and pepper.
- The word duff is also a traditional English name for pudding.
What is Duff?
Duff is a sweet, dense dessert from the Bahamas made by enclosing pieces of fruit inside a rich pastry dough. Guava is by far the most characteristic fruit selected for the recipe. The surrounding dough incorporates flour, butter, sugar, and eggs, lightened slightly with baking powder. Cooks flavor the mixture using ground spices like cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, and a dash of pepper, together with a measure of rum. Rather than being baked, the wrapped parcel is gently boiled and then presented accompanied by a sweet sauce.
Where does Duff come from?
The term duff has a long history as a colloquial northern English variant of the word pudding. Traditional British fare includes boiled savory or sweet dishes like suet duff, Christmas duff, and plum duff. Across the English-speaking world, the term spread into literature as well. In his 1901 Australian short story titled "The Ghosts of Many Christmases", author Henry Lawson used both pudding and duff to describe the exact same canned plum pudding.
How is Duff made?
Preparation begins by combining flour, baking powder, butter, sugar, and beaten eggs into a tender dough. Warm spices—cloves, nutmeg, cinnamon, and pepper—are stirred in alongside rum to give the pastry base deep flavor. Pieces of fruit, typically ripe guava, are folded directly into the dough. Once neatly wrapped and sealed, the entire package is boiled in a pot until set. When finished, it is sliced and accompanied by sauce.
Questions people ask about Duff
Where does duff come from?
Duff is a staple dessert of Bahamian cuisine. The word itself originated as an English dialect term for pudding, giving its name to older British creations such as suet duff and plum duff.
What is duff made of?
It is made of fruit—particularly guava—wrapped in a dough of flour, butter, eggs, sugar, and baking powder. The mixture is spiced with cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, and pepper, and flavored with rum.
How is duff cooked?
After the fruit is folded into the spiced dough, the package is boiled in water until fully cooked through. Once ready, it is traditionally served with a sauce poured over it.
Good reading and sources
The facts on this page come from the Wikipedia article "Duff (dessert)", written by its contributors and used under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence, and from its Wikidata record (CC0). EveryThali rewrote the text in its own words, with AI assistance, and compares every page with the article to make sure no passage is copied. It may be reused under the same CC BY-SA 4.0 licence with a link back.
It may contain mistakes, and it is not dietary or allergy advice: recipes differ from cook to cook. If something is wrong, tell us. Last refreshed 2026-10-04.
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