Thursday, February 18, 2021

What is an English Breakfast?

What I'm reading: a definitive treatise on the English Breakfast.

The English Breakfast today is a popular choice for discriminating lovers of all things British. In London and other English destinations there are B&Bs, country inns, urban hotels, pretentious and unpretentious dining establishments, Harry Potter theme park restaurants (representing the Hogwarts dining room), and probably a few surviving country houses that still offer a menu that fits the description of this classic meal. You can even get an English Breakfast at some places in New York; cruise ship menus often have English Breakfast options, as do trains and car ferry restaurants -- providing they aren't stopped by pandemic closures 

If you order an English Breakfast, the expectation is that you will find a set choice of foods. The usual offerings would be tea or coffee, toast drowned in butter, two kinds of bacon, variously cooked eggs, a grilled tomato, a few mushrooms, several types of English-style sausage such as chipolatas; a dish of kedgeree; fish such as bloaters, smoked salmon, haddock, or kippers; black or white pudding, Heinz baked beans, marmalade, and possibly something or other in a white sauce. 

If you find a croissant, a blueberry muffin, or a Danish pastry in an "English Breakfast" your host has probably overstepped the traditional definition of this very English meal. An egg-white omelet would also be suspect. The English Breakfast flavors are traditionally mostly savory not sweet, and the choices are mostly fattening, not abstemious. 

Two items that were blamed for the demise of the English Breakfast in the 1920s were grapefruit and packaged cold cereal, which were more convenient and faster, and less dependent on domestic servants. The Americans were held responsible for these innovations, but that's not fair. After all, it was the American Heinz corporation that developed the canned baked beans that became a luxury item for country house breakfasts  before canned food was a cheap and easy choice and a required item on the English Breakfast list. In any case, the English Breakfast did not die, but was resurrected after the World War II rationing almost brought it to extinction.

"The English Breakfast is the national dish of a mythic and indivisible England, a repast that, despite differences in execution, binds its people together as one." (The English Breakfast, Kaori O'Connor, p 46). There are Welsh, Irish, and Scottish versions but there is one English Breakfast to rule them all.

The English Breakfast as many people imagine it now may take inspiration from literary versions of the meal. A century ago, detective fiction by Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers, A.A.Milne, Arthur Conan Doyle, and others often set their imagined murders in a country house. The resident servants got up early to produce a lavish buffet with every item on this list and maybe more, to be consumed by hosts, guests, and possibly murderers and detectives. Versions of the English Breakfast still show up in current detective fiction by authors like Tana French, sometimes called a fry-up or a Full English. Such a breakfast in more recent detective fiction is rarely presented by a staff of servants in a serious country house, but still -- it survives in fiction as it does in real life.

While twentieth and twenty-first century versions are more familiar, the origin of the English Breakfast was actually during the Victorian era, when gentry living in country houses were a model of English propriety — and culinary correctness. The increasing wealth of the non-gentry created a new class: one that aspired to act genteel, but that had not been born into gentility nor inherited an estate. A real gentleman's estate would ideally stretch as far as the eye could see from the manor house. From these lands would come all the food served in the dining rooms and breakfast rooms of the stately home at the center of the property. The dishes that showed up on the table were the products of "one's own soil, rivers, forests and moorlands. The upper class fondness for venison, game and salmon springs from the fact that these are all specific products of country estates, once largely available only to those who possessed them." (p. 23)

For aspiring non-aristocrats, the Victorian era produced a large literature on how to act genteel even if you weren't born to it. Some of the challenges included training your domestic staff to cook and serve as they should, and setting tables worthy of the class to which you wanted to belong. O'Connor's book includes facsimile versions of three Victorian manuals on the ideal high-class breakfast -- that is, instructions on how to emulate the gentry in their country houses no matter how humble were your actual circumstances. To serve a proper breakfast required proper recipes for the foods, but also demanded the use of damask tablecloths, china place settings and serving dishes, silver tableware, utensils like a purpose-made scissors for cutting the top off a boiled egg, various types of toast racks, or coffee and tea sets with ewers, creamers, and so on. You needed a special diagram to know how to arrange all this on the table. Not to mention a big table. It wasn't easy!


From O’Connor’s book: an illustration of how to set a breakfast buffet for twelve.

In a future post I'll describe more of the fascinating story of the English Breakfast as told in O'Connor's wonderfully detailed book.

Review © 2021 mae sander for mae food dot blog spot dot com.

19 comments:

Angie's Recipes said...

Lots of work for a breakfast...sunny side up and crisp bacon are for me the breakfast for the Queen :-))

My name is Erika. said...

This book looks really interesting. On a trip to London we stayed at a hotel for a week that offered English breakfast everyday. The dilemma was that we wanted to be full to get a day started but after about 4 of these mornings, a croissant would have tasted fantastic. I'm going to go check this out on Amazon. Thanks.

Jeanie said...

I love this post so much! I always loved starting out the day with a huge full English. It kept us going for hours! I'll look forward to the next post.

David M. Gascoigne, said...

I can tell you this, a visit to the UK is always made better by an English breakfast or two. Here is what is perfect for me: eggs, sausage, black pudding, baked beans and mushrooms. When I last visited we spent time in Scotland at a venerable old hotel where they made the best black pudding ever created by human hand! The salad I plan for lunch doesn't seem quite so appealing any more!

DVArtist said...

I really like this post. Such interesting information. I would love an English breakfast, even if it is a lot of food. Have a great day today.

Vagabonde said...

The first time I went to England when I was 13 years old and had the English breakfast I was amazed. Up to then my breakfast had only been baguette with butter or a croissant on Sundays. I liked it so much that since then (and we are talking decades) I have my English breakfast, kind of, at least twice a week: a soft boil egg in an eggcup, English muffin with butter and homemade jam, cherry tomatoes, 2 small sausages (or bacon sometimes) with HP Sauce on the egg as was served to me then. Voila – had it yesterday. But I never can find the same breakfast sausages here; they just don’t taste the same.

Tandy | Lavender and Lime (http://tandysinclair.com) said...

I'm a huge fan of a full breakfast but never have the baked beans. Some of the items you mentioned here I've never seen on a full English buffet or menu. Shabbat Shalom Mae.

Iris Flavia said...

That´s exactly what they serve on Singapore airlines and it´s always terrible!! LOL. That tomato, ewww. Looks like a boiled alien.
When I was in England... oh, wait, that was 1986 (!!!!) we always got cornflakes.

Anne in the kitchen said...

Both my mouth and my time are so glad I only like coffee in the morning, though my husband would think he were in heaven if I ever made him an English breakfast. His cooking skills limit him to eggs and toast

rhapsodyinbooks said...

Fun post! American detectives seem to eat things like cheetos for breakfast. English detectives have much more interesting cuisines!

Deb Nance at Readerbuzz said...

I could not have named a single dish in a classic English breakfast---except, perhaps, eggs---before I read your post today. I'd never have thought it traditionally included beans or fish or pudding.

Fascinating.

Elza Reads said...

My husband is all keen on an English breakfast and normally makes it himself just about every morning of the week. I go a bit more continental with muesli and yoghurt and fruit.

Very interesting post! I enjoyed reading it!

Happy cooking and reading this week!

Elza Reads

IzaBzh said...

This is really interesting, thank you for sharing ! I remember the first time I went to England and found myself with baked beans and a sausage in my place, I only expected eggs and bacon - you should have seen my face (how can I not eat that and remain polite ?). I remember reading last year how the traditional tea time is not that old, I was surprised too - in a different way. I read last year a book by Jacques Attali called, roughly translated, histories of food that probably would interested you very much. It's been translated so far in two other languages but not English...

Mae Travels said...

@IzaBzh -- Thanks for the suggestion of the comprehensive history of food. I often read books in French as well as in English, and I keep an eye out for new food histories. Because I read so many food books, I usually choose the ones that focus on specific topics, not on the entire history of mankind, to avoid rereading the basic history over and over.

mae

Laurie C said...

Coincidentally, I'm planning breakfast for dinner today. I might add baked beans to the plate!

Tina said...

I love a good breakfast and a big breakfast on occasion. When we traveled I think I like the Irish breakfast better than English. Not too crazy about the beans on the plate but I love everything else. Great review on this book

shelleyrae @ book'd out said...


I don’t actually eat breakfast but I found all that information fascinating, thanks for sharing

Divers and Sundry said...

I don't eat breakfast at all, but this looks like a full supper to me :) I'd hafta pass, though, as I don't have the linens or serving pieces.

A Day in the Life on the Farm said...

I often think that I should start making large breakfasts and lighter dinners but alas....my stomach doesn't seem to agree with me...the best I can do is a larger brunch several hours after I am up.