English Breakfast

By RecipeLot

United Kingdom Breakfast The traditional English breakfast is ubiquitous the world over. Cafés and hotels all around the world offer a version, often far removed from what might be considered conventional. The English breakfast as it is known today is based, like so many British traditions, on what became popular in the Victorian era. Victorian home economist Isabella Beeton gives the following advice in The Book of Household Management (1861) about breakfast: The key components of a modern English breakfast include bacon, sausages, fried or poached eggs, sliced fried red tomatoes, baked beans (in cans), fresh sautéed mushrooms, fried or roast potatoes, fried bread, and black pudding. It may often include stewed prunes, buttered toast, often spread with orange marmalade, tea, and/or orange juice. The English breakfast frequently suffers from being prepared badly and with poor quality ingredients. Cooked well, with high quality ingredients, it can be a delicious start to the day. Preparing an English breakfast is quite easy; it is basically a matter of starting off cooking the items that take the longest to cook, and moving through to the things that take the least time so that it is all ready at the same time. It is made even easier by the fact that most of the ingredients can be kept warm for a while once cooked without spoiling; this fact allows for the common way of serving English breakfasts as a kind of buffet where diners can help themselves from warm serving plates.

• Cooking time: 35 minutes
• Servings: 4