More on the English Breakfast (a la O’Connor, that is)
Was the English breakfast invented in the mid nineteenth century? That’s the worry Adam Balic, who is as profoundly informed about the history of British food as anyone I know, expresses about my report of Kaori O’Connor’s English Breakfast. And he adds some wonderful quotations as evidence.
Mea culpa. I said that the heyday of the upper class English breakfast was from the mid nineteenth century to the mid twentieth. That’s not what Kaori said. She traces its roots back much further.
But actually I’d defend my interpretation. As an erstwhile historian of technology, I imbibed a distinction made by economists and historians of technology. A distinction between invention and innovation. Yes, it is often important and revealing to know when something first appeared (invention). But it’s also important to know when it gained acceptance (innovation and diffusion).
So we have here two questions. (1) When did breakfast for the upper classes first appear? and (2) when did it become an icon and an institution? The iconic period, I submit, was the hundred-year period between the mid nineteenth and mid twentieth centuries.
Which leads into a second issue. Why was this so? I find the way that Kaori links it to other cultural trends in the period very thought-provoking. We think before we eat. Why did the English think breakfast was so important. I find her analysis useful here. That’s because one of my passions is connecting eating to the rest of culture and history. And very few histories of food do that. Well, as always I exagerate. But food is all too often off on a little track of its own.
So Kaori’s story is over simple? Yes. It leaves out the Scots? Yes (and the relation between the Scots and the English upper class is a rich, rich vein to explore not just in food). But informative and thought provoking? Yes to that too.
Adam? Anyone else? I’d love more thoughts.
