Breakfast expert Seb Emina takes us through the 'magic nine' items that he says form the classic Full English.
What do a five-star hotel, a high street restaurant and a roadside cafe have in common? It's definitely not the lunch specials, the customers or the furniture. No, the one thing that is the same, no matter whereabouts in the country you are, is breakfast.
A morning menu will always, always feature a dish claiming to be a 'full' breakfast. It will feature eggs, bacon, toast, mushrooms and so on. Popularised by the Victorians, this style of breakfast is our most important contribution to world cuisine. Why else would we call it the 'full us'?
But how can we be sure that we are getting a full English rather than a mere fry-up? Is there an accepted list of what a full English should contain? In my book The Breakfast Bible I propose that a truly full English should consist of the following 'magic nine' ingredients. Anything else is a mere fry-up.
Eggs
Eggs have been a breakfast favourite since the Romans introduced domesticated chickens over two thousand years ago. How you have your eggs says a lot about you. Fried are for the straight-talking, poached are for the 'healthy' and scrambled are for the thoughtful.
In the US you get to say things like 'sunny side up' and 'over easy' but that amount of choice has never really caught on in Britain. An egg cooked too much or too little will ruin a breakfast, no matter what the other ingredients are doing.
Bacon
Britain's all-time favourite meat, so much so that in the middle ages bacon was used as a form of currency. The phrase 'bringing home the bacon' comes from the once-popular sport of pig wrestling, in which the prize for capturing a greased pig was the pig itself.
Today, much of the bacon sold in the UK is Danish but there is some excellent British bacon to be found. It is worth seeking out.
Sausages
Often this is the ingredient that frightens greasy spoon-goers the most. What is in those mystery tubes? Better a plain cafe sausage, though, than one flavoured with apple or – show me the nearest exit/window – chilli.
Meat percentage is not a simple matter of higher equals better, as breadcrumbs are needed to keep the bangers moist. Still, 80-90% is a good sign. And never prick a sausage. You want that juice.
Mushrooms
Mushrooms were only cultivated commercially in Britain from the mid-twentieth century onwards, making them a relatively new member of the breakfast brigade.
A lot of people have problems with their 'slug-like' texture (have these people ever actually eaten a slug?) and will attempt to negotiate additional toast instead. Maybe they were once served tinned mushrooms, still a staple of many a convenience-minded greasy spoon. Americans find the idea of mushrooms at breakfast bizarre.
Tomatoes
When they were first brought back from the American continent, tomatoes were greeted with suspicion. The French thought they were aphrodisiacs and called them 'love apples', and the British avoided them for years believing them to be poisonous. Eventually, of course, the fruit caught on. Today it is hard to imagine world cuisine, and especially fried breakfasts, without them.
Too often at breakfast a tomato half is served unloved and under-grilled: hard, tasteless and pointless. In fact it should be tasty enough to do away with the need for ketchup.
Black pudding
One of my favourite Facebook groups is called We all love a full English breakfast. Members post photos of their fry-ups so that others may comment. It can be harsh. Rightly, any pic that does not include at least one slice of black pudding is seen as uncivilised.
I've never understood why so many people who happily tuck into economy sausages containing who-knows-what will turn squeamish when faced with this delicious snack, a traditional way of not wasting any of the pig. But their scruples do mean cheap black pudding for the rest of us.
The best are from Bury in Lancashire, Stornoway in the Outer Hebrides or Clonakilty on the south tip of Ireland.
Toast
The act of toasting your bread seems simple, often leading to a false sense of security followed shortly afterwards by disaster. Distracted by the frying of eggs or the turning of sausages, you forget about the toast until, by way of smoke signal (or smoke alarm), it reminds you itself.
Or you forget to take the butter out of the fridge to soften and lose vital breakfasting minutes scraping it onto fraying toast.
Toast, like tea, is one area where greasy spoon cafes often outdo more expensive places, with stacks of delicious buttered triangular slices arriving barely seconds after being ordered.
Baked beans
A controversial ingredient, that many do not accept to be breakfast food. But take a look at the menu of any breakfast-serving cafe and it is hard to argue that baked beans aren't part of the Full English family.
Native Americans would eat a version stewed in bear fat with maple syrup. This inspired European settlers to create their own take using pork belly and treacle. These Boston baked beans are still a traditional Saturday night meal.
The Heinz version we love in the UK didn't arrive from the US until the late nineteenth century, and was initially sold as a luxury item from the food hall at Fortnum & Mason in Mayfair.
Potatoes
Also controversial; bubble and squeak is usually acceptable, but the question of hash browns or, dare I say it, chips has ended friendships and caused happy couples to realise they in fact know nothing about each other.
The enlightened among us know that potatoes are very useful for soaking up egg yolk, bean juice and so on. If introducing breakfast potatoes to a non-believer, consider starting off with a halfway house such as Scottish tattie scones or their delicious Irish equivalent, boxty (potato bread)
Regional variations elsewhere in the UK
Of course these items are for a Full English. In recent years we’ve seen the rise of the Full Scottish, including things like lorne sausage, haggis and white pudding (some even talk of adding porridge as a ‘starter’). Meanwhile the Full Welsh adds laverbread and cockles, and the Ulster fry piles on the bread variants with farl, and the aforementioned boxty.
What do you like on your plate when you have a 'Full' breakfast? Tell us in the Comments below.
Seb Emina is author of The Breakfast Bible, published by Bloomsbury. He writes for the The London Review of Breakfasts
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