The English Breakfast: Then Not Now
Last time I was in Heathrow Airport, I killed time by ordering breakfast. The so-called English breakfast was centered around a great sloppy helping of baked beans. English-style Heinz baked beans, that is, less sweet, less firm, paler than the American version. I’ve nothing against baked beans, indeed I rather like them, but not this way and not at breakfast.
Like all the English, I have happy memories of breakfasts. The ones I knew included (not all at the same time) eggs boiled, scrambled, and fried; excellent back and streaky bacon both green and smoked; smoked haddock; kippers (divine); porridge; fried kidneys; wonderful mushrooms picked that morning in the fields; grilled tomatoes; good toast; home made seville orange marmalade; cups of strong tea of a special mixture. They were the first meal of the day taken after everyone had been up and about for a couple of hours.
Now here comes a “biography of the meal, a culinary detective story and a cookbook all rolled into one.” That’s Kaori O’Connor’s promise on the first page of this book. I opened it with great anticipation because Kaori O’Connor has written the single best essay on the Hawaiian luau that I have ever encountered. And I was not disappointed as you will see.
But first, let’s get price out of the way. This book costs about $150. Even for 500 pages that’s a lot. Publishing being what it is, I’ve had this happen to books I’ve written too, discovering that they were published at prices only a few libraries could afford. Hard to avoid with specialist topics. So I hope you have a library that can spring for this book.
What Kaori is describing is neither the Heathrow breakfast nor the farm house breakfast that I knew, but the country house breakfast that lasted about a century from the mid nineteenth to the mid twentieth century, when World War II pretty much polished it off.
She offers three historical chapters as an introduction, just over fifty pages in all. Then reprints of a couple of small nineteenth-century pieces on the English breakfast. And then reprints of three breakfast recipe books. (1) Georgiana Hill’s The Breakfast Book(1865); (2) Miss M.L. Allen’s Breakfast Dishes for Every Morning of Three Months (1884); and (3) Colonel Kenney Herbert‘s Fifty Breakfasts (1894).
The breakfast cookbooks, all written for the leisured classes or those who aspired to be part of the leisured classes, are a window into a vanished world. They are mainly for men (women could stay in bed). They interestingly correspond in time and meaty composition pretty much to the Mexican almuerzo, taking place between 9 and 11 in the morning. For the British well-to-do male, this buffet-style meal was fortification enough for a day of country pursuits, hunting, shooting, or fishing.
The recipes, apart from the dishes mentioned above–bar the baked beans of course–are full of potted shrimp and crab, fish pies, pickled meat dishes from brisket and goose to ox palate and thrush, apple and strawberry fools, a variety of macaroni dishes, and lots and lots of Indian-style dishes: pilau, kedgeree, curried lobster-as well as a staggering array of hot breads that I can’t wait to try.
So why did breakfast become the English meal? For that, you’ll have to wait until tomorrow and Kaori’s history. As a sneak preview, her brief pages gave me more food for thought about the history of my home country’s food than anything I have read in years.
Does she mention Scotland? To date the few things I have read on the hsitory of the English breakfast fail to mention Scotland, even though there is good reason to suspect that they are connect. The quality and range of breakfast in Scotland of frequently mentioned by English travelers in the 18th century, a lot of hunting was done in Scotland by the English from the 18th-19th century, this is associated with Grand Houses, which are an important part of the development of breakfast as a large meal.
No, she does not mention Scotland. In fact she makes a point of talking solely about England. But your points are well taken.