Full breakfast
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A full breakfast[1] is a traditional cooked meal, typically and originally eaten at breakfast, though now often served at other times during the day.
The full breakfast traditionally comprises several fried foods, usually including bacon and eggs although there are vegetarian alternatives, and is popular throughout the British Isles and other parts of the English-speaking world. Depending on where it is served, it is called bacon and eggs,[2] a fry, a fry up,[3] The Great British breakfast,[4][5] a full English breakfast, a full Irish breakfast, a full Scottish breakfast, a full Welsh breakfast[6] or an Ulster fry.[7] The detailed composition of the breakfast varies from place to place.
Contents |
[edit] Origin
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| Part of the Meals series |
| Common meals |
| Breakfast • Brunch • Lunch Tea • Dinner • Supper |
| Components & courses |
| Appetizer • Entrée • Main course Side dish • Drink • Dessert |
| Related concepts |
| Food • Eating • Cuisine Etiquette • Buffet • Banquet |
The original Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable calls it a Scotch breakfast and describes it as "a substantial breakfast of sundry sorts of good things to eat and drink."
"Bacon and eggs" as the name of the meal was popularised by Edward Bernays in the 1920s. To promote sales of bacon, he conducted a survey of physicians and reported their recommendations that people eat hearty breakfasts. He sent the results of the survey to 5,000 physicians, along with publicity touting bacon and eggs as a hearty breakfast.[8]
[edit] Tradition
In hotels and bed-and-breakfasts a full breakfast might include more options such as cereal, porridge, kippers, toast and jam or marmalade, kedgeree, and devilled kidneys. Fruit juice and dry cereal were added to the breakfast after 1950.[citation needed] The term "full breakfast" is used to differentiate it from the simpler continental breakfast of tea, coffee and fruit juices with croissants or pastries.
[edit] All-day breakfast
Many cafés and pubs serve the meal at all hours as an "all-day breakfast". It can be accompanied by orange juice and tea or coffee or, in a pub, an alcoholic drink.
[edit] Typical ingredients
The ingredients of a fry-up vary according to region and taste. The rashers of bacon (sometimes described simply as "rashers", which is a synonym for "slices") and the eggs are usually fried, but grilled bacon, poached eggs, or scrambled eggs may be offered as alternatives. These are usually accompanied by toast or fried bread.
Some of the additional ingredients that may be included in a full breakfast are:
- fried bacon
- baked beans
- US-style biscuits and gravy (normally sausage gravy), also in the American South
- black pudding
- bubble and squeak
- chips
- condiments such as brown sauce and ketchup
- egg in a basket
- English muffins or scones
- French toast
- fried eggs
- Fruit pudding in Scotland
- grits in the Southern United States
- hash browns
- kippers
- fried mushrooms
- pancakes (in the USA, Canada, and Ireland)
- sautéd potatoes
- potato bread (also called "fadge" or tattie scone)
- butcher's sausages
- scrapple (in the Midatlantic US)
- soda bread
- fried, grilled, or tinned tomatoes
- white pudding
[edit] Regional variants
[edit] Full English breakfast
The normal ingredients of a traditional full English breakfast are bacon, eggs, fried or grilled tomatoes, fried mushrooms, fried bread or toast, and sausages, usually served with a mug of tea. Black pudding is added in some regions as well as fried leftover mashed potatoes (called Potato cakes). Originally a way to use up leftover vegetables from the main meal of the day before, bubble and squeak, shallow-fried leftover vegetables with potato, has become a breakfast feature in its own right. Baked beans (from a tin) and hash browns are modern additions.
When an English breakfast is ordered to contain everything available it is often referred to as a Full Monty. The OED states that "Perhaps the most plausible (explanation) is that it is from a colloquial shortening of the name of Montague Maurice Burton(1885-1952), men's tailor, and referred originally to the purchase of a complete three-piece suit".[9]
[edit] Full Irish breakfast
In the Republic of Ireland, as elsewhere, the exact constituents of a full breakfast vary, depending on geographical area, personal taste and cultural affiliation. Traditionally, the most common ingredients are bacon rashers, sausages, fried eggs, white pudding, black pudding, sometimes liver, and brown soda bread, normally accompanied with black tea and milk. Potato bread, baked beans, fried tomatoes and mushrooms are sometimes included. Toast is now commonly served as an alternative to brown soda bread.
[edit] Ulster Fry
An Ulster Fry is a dish similar to the Irish fry popular throughout Northern Ireland and the three counties of Ulster which lie in the Republic of Ireland (Cavan, Monaghan and Donegal).
A traditional Ulster Fry consists of bacon, eggs, sausages (either pork or beef), the farl form of soda bread (the farl split in half crossways to expose the inner bread and then fried with the exposed side down), sometimes Pancake and potato bread[10] Other common components include mushrooms or wheaten bread. All this is traditionally fried.
The Ulster Fry is often served for lunch and dinner in households and cafés around the province. Emigrants have also popularised the serving of an Ulster Fry outside Northern Ireland.
Between 2001 and 2007 a BBC Two Northern Ireland ident was used during these opt-outs and featured the BBC Two ident eating an Ulster Fry.
[edit] Full Scottish breakfast
In Scotland, a square sliced sausage patty, black pudding, fried tomato, tattie scones, oatcakes, haggis and fruit pudding might also be served, along with the foundation of bacon and eggs.
[edit] Full Welsh breakfast
The traditional Welsh breakfast includes laverbread, a seaweed purée which is then mixed with oatmeal, formed into patties and fried in bacon fat. Cockles are also often eaten.[citation needed]
[edit] North America
A full North American breakfast consists of streaky bacon, eggs, hash browns, and toast. It is more often referred to as a "country breakfast" in many areas of the Midwest. The terms "fry" and "full breakfast" are not generally used in North America, though hotels may distinguish between a light "continental breakfast" and a hot, cooked breakfast.
In the Southern United States the meal is typically known as a "big breakfast" or "Sunday breakfast" and usually consists of eggs, bacon, grits, toast and sausage, ham or steak, and sometimes pancakes or biscuits, served with coffee.
In Canada, a full breakfast would be very similar to an American breakfast, but would more often contain Back bacon instead of strip bacon (although strip bacon is still common).
[edit] Central America
Ingredients include ham, sausage, bacon and eggs, much like a full breakfast elsewhere. A distinguishing feature is that fry jacks are also eaten. Fry jacks are fried pieces of dough, similar to beignets or sopapillas. Can also include items like toast, pancakes, or hashbrowns. Fresh orange juice is often added as a drink.
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ David Else, 2003, Britain, Lonely Planet, ISBN 1740593383: :"If you stay in B&Bs or visit a café during your visit to Britain, as you surely will, you'll just as surely come across the phenomenon known as the 'full breakfast'. The "full breakfast" is almost always called a "full English breakfast" and often shortened to simply "a full English". Around Europe a breakfast of this type is often termed as " an english breakfast" to distinguish it from a "continental breakfast". "A full english breakfast" usually consists of bacon, sausages, egg, tomatoes, mushrooms, baked beans, sausage and fried bread. In B&Bs it's preceded by cereals, served with tea or coffee, and followed by toast, butter, jam and marmalade. In northern Britain (if you're really lucky) you might be served with black pudding - a mixture of meat, blood and fat, served in slices.... If you don't feel like eating half a farmyard, it's quite okay to ask for just the egg and tomatoes. In Scotland you might get oatcakes instead of fried bread. Some B&Bs and hotels offer other alternatives such as kippers (smoked fish) or a 'continental breakfast' - which completely omits the cooked stuff, and may add something really exotic like croissants or fresh fruit."
- ^ Fried Rashers of Bacon and Poached Eggs Recipe - Mrs Beeton Revisited from The Foody
- ^ BBC NEWS | UK | R.I.P. Full English Breakfast
- ^ The Great British Breakfast
- ^ The Great British Breakfast
- ^ News Wales > Agriculture > Welsh breakfast in Brussels
- ^ UKTV Food: Recipes: Ulster Fry and Steamed Fried Eggs
- ^ "Freud's Nephew and the Origins of Public Relations". National Public Radio. April 22, 2005. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4612464. Retrieved on 2009-07-05. "Bernays used his Uncle Sigmund Freud's ideas to help convince the public, among other things, that bacon and eggs was the true all-American breakfast."
- ^ Entry from OED Online - Series One - Oxford English Dictionary
- ^ BBC - h2g2 - Great International Breakfast Dishes
[edit] External links
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Wikibooks Cookbook has a recipe/module on |
- Ulster Fry and Eggs recipe
- Why the great British breakfast is a killer
- In-Depth site covering Irish Breakfasts in Ireland and elsewhere
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