The joy of breakfast
According to the novelist Somerset Maugham, to eat well in England you should have breakfast at least three times a day. In Maugham's time - era of the Edwardian breakfast, when from Friday to Monday country-house guests could help themselves from sideboards groaning with heated silver plates of scrambled egg, bacon, sausage, black pudding and porridge - he doubtless had a point. He would be less keen on the 21st century version, perhaps, in which the Egg McMuffin, skimmed milk and egg-white omlettes sometimes play a part. But for centuries, it's true, the British Breakfast could take on all-comers.
And Maugham is not the only fan of a good breakfast, as soon becomes apparent from a new book on the subject. The Breakfast Bible, published by Seb Emina, founder of the cheekily named (given the august presence of the similarly titled London Review Books) the The London Review Of Breakfast blog. Emina and his merry gang of breakfast bloggers - Blake Pudding, HP Seuss, Poppy Tartt and Malcolm Eggs - have been described as a 'band of breakfast-obsessed radicals', bestowing the same amount of serious attention on breakfast as you might on Ian McEwan's latest novel... A relevant point to make, because Emina is as interested in fictional breakfasts, and who eats or has eaten what for breakfast over the centuries, as he is in the actual components of the meal itself and how you go about preparing them.
The most riveting sections in his book describe the kinds of breakfast enjoyed by famous historical figures. Edward VII, for instance, liked to start the day with a hollowed-out onion filled with chicken livers, cream and brandy. Abraham Lincoln’s choice was a boiled egg and a cup of coffee, while Charles Dickens breakfasted on two tablespoons of rum avoured with cream, which sounds much more appetising than the breakfast he gave to Mr Quilp in The Old Curiosity Shop: ‘giant prawns with the heads and tails on’ and boiling hot tea drunk ‘straight from the kettle’.
Quite often, breakfasts were staggeringly alcoholic. Take Winston Churchill, who liked a bottle of Pol Roger before settling down to a brace of cold snipe and a pint of port. And how did anyone get anything done after breakfasting on beer with mutton stew (Queen Elizabeth I), bread soaked in ale (12th-century choristers at St Paul’s Cathedral) or a Canaan Balsam, the cocktail consumed ‘first thing’ in Moscow, consisting of 100ml methylated spirits, 200ml milk stout and 100ml clear varnish?
‘Start with that and you need no further sustenance for the rest of the day,’ says Russian author Venedikt Erofeev.
The Canaan Balsam’s potential to finish one off completely reminds one of the breakfast favoured by writer Hunter S Thompson, who had strict ideas about what to eat in the morning ‘whether or not I have been to bed’. He recommended ‘four bloody Marys’ to start with, followed by ‘two grapefruits, a pot of coffee, Rangoon crêpes, a half pound of cornedbeef hash with diced chillies, a Spanish omelette, a quart of milk, a chopped lemon for random seasoning, a slice of key-lime pie, two margaritas and six lines of the best cocaine.’
Thompson, who believed that breakfast should be consumed al fresco and in the nude, liked to eat this meal alone, and the praises of the solitary breakfast are sung throughout this book.
Most people like to consume their toast and marmalade – which was introduced into this country by Catherine of Braganza of Portugal in 1662, who ate marmalade as an after-dinner aid to digestion; it took another 100 or so years before it was spread on toast – accompanied only by their newspaper of choice. As Churchill remarked, ‘My wife and I tried two or three times in the last 40 years to have breakfast together. It was so disagreeable we had to stop.’
The husband-and-wife breakfast divide is even evident at Downton Abbey, where only the men appear to eat in the mornings. On the one occasion daughter Edith makes an appearance, she is asked why on earth she’s not having breakfast in bed like the other women.
‘Because I’m not married,’ she replies stoically…
The Breakfast Bible by Seb Emina and Malcolm Eggs, is published by Bloomsbury, priced £16.99.
Six large eggs cooked in butter with extra salt, one pound of bacon, half a pound of sausages, peanut butter and banana sandwiches. The daily breakfast of Elvis Presley
GRANOLA, 1881 The first cereal to emerge from the kitchen of Dr John Harvey Kellogg. It was similar to granula, but was an oatmealbased product. Within a decade, Dr Kellogg was selling two tons of his cereal a week.
SHREDDED WHEAT, 1893 Invented by Henry Perky, a lawyer from Denver, who came up with a process by which grains of wheat were steamed until soft and then rolled between rollers to form strands. These were then cut into biscuits.
AND A FEW THAT BOMBED…
And Maugham is not the only fan of a good breakfast, as soon becomes apparent from a new book on the subject. The Breakfast Bible, published by Seb Emina, founder of the cheekily named (given the august presence of the similarly titled London Review Books) the The London Review Of Breakfast blog. Emina and his merry gang of breakfast bloggers - Blake Pudding, HP Seuss, Poppy Tartt and Malcolm Eggs - have been described as a 'band of breakfast-obsessed radicals', bestowing the same amount of serious attention on breakfast as you might on Ian McEwan's latest novel... A relevant point to make, because Emina is as interested in fictional breakfasts, and who eats or has eaten what for breakfast over the centuries, as he is in the actual components of the meal itself and how you go about preparing them.
The most riveting sections in his book describe the kinds of breakfast enjoyed by famous historical figures. Edward VII, for instance, liked to start the day with a hollowed-out onion filled with chicken livers, cream and brandy. Abraham Lincoln’s choice was a boiled egg and a cup of coffee, while Charles Dickens breakfasted on two tablespoons of rum avoured with cream, which sounds much more appetising than the breakfast he gave to Mr Quilp in The Old Curiosity Shop: ‘giant prawns with the heads and tails on’ and boiling hot tea drunk ‘straight from the kettle’.
Quite often, breakfasts were staggeringly alcoholic. Take Winston Churchill, who liked a bottle of Pol Roger before settling down to a brace of cold snipe and a pint of port. And how did anyone get anything done after breakfasting on beer with mutton stew (Queen Elizabeth I), bread soaked in ale (12th-century choristers at St Paul’s Cathedral) or a Canaan Balsam, the cocktail consumed ‘first thing’ in Moscow, consisting of 100ml methylated spirits, 200ml milk stout and 100ml clear varnish?
‘Start with that and you need no further sustenance for the rest of the day,’ says Russian author Venedikt Erofeev.
The Canaan Balsam’s potential to finish one off completely reminds one of the breakfast favoured by writer Hunter S Thompson, who had strict ideas about what to eat in the morning ‘whether or not I have been to bed’. He recommended ‘four bloody Marys’ to start with, followed by ‘two grapefruits, a pot of coffee, Rangoon crêpes, a half pound of cornedbeef hash with diced chillies, a Spanish omelette, a quart of milk, a chopped lemon for random seasoning, a slice of key-lime pie, two margaritas and six lines of the best cocaine.’
Thompson, who believed that breakfast should be consumed al fresco and in the nude, liked to eat this meal alone, and the praises of the solitary breakfast are sung throughout this book.
Most people like to consume their toast and marmalade – which was introduced into this country by Catherine of Braganza of Portugal in 1662, who ate marmalade as an after-dinner aid to digestion; it took another 100 or so years before it was spread on toast – accompanied only by their newspaper of choice. As Churchill remarked, ‘My wife and I tried two or three times in the last 40 years to have breakfast together. It was so disagreeable we had to stop.’
The husband-and-wife breakfast divide is even evident at Downton Abbey, where only the men appear to eat in the mornings. On the one occasion daughter Edith makes an appearance, she is asked why on earth she’s not having breakfast in bed like the other women.
‘Because I’m not married,’ she replies stoically…
The Breakfast Bible by Seb Emina and Malcolm Eggs, is published by Bloomsbury, priced £16.99.
Memorable breakfasts
24 scrambled eggs, flour tortillas, ketchup. Last breakfast of Robert Streetman, executed by the State of Texas in 1988Six large eggs cooked in butter with extra salt, one pound of bacon, half a pound of sausages, peanut butter and banana sandwiches. The daily breakfast of Elvis Presley
Oatmeal porridge with milk, smoked herrings, jacket potatoes, ham and eggs, fresh bread and butter, marmalade, Swedish bread, tea, coffee. Third-class breakfast menu, RMS Titanic, 14 April 1912
Bread and cheese with water. Commoner’s breakfast in Pompeii
First breakfast cereals
GRANULA, 1863 Invented by Dr James Caleb Jackson who owned a hydrotherapy institute in New York, where patients were doused in water and fed on fruit, veg and grains. To increase the appeal of his diet he devised a new breakfast by mixing bran flour with water and baking it twice. It was soaked in milk overnight to make it edible.GRANOLA, 1881 The first cereal to emerge from the kitchen of Dr John Harvey Kellogg. It was similar to granula, but was an oatmealbased product. Within a decade, Dr Kellogg was selling two tons of his cereal a week.
SHREDDED WHEAT, 1893 Invented by Henry Perky, a lawyer from Denver, who came up with a process by which grains of wheat were steamed until soft and then rolled between rollers to form strands. These were then cut into biscuits.
AND A FEW THAT BOMBED…
- Pac-Man cereal (1983)
- C-3PO’s cereal (1984)
- E.T. Cereal (1984)
- Breakfast With Barbie (1989)