A full English breakfast with scrambled eggs, sausage, black pudding, bacon, mushrooms, baked beans, hash browns, and half a tomato

A similar Scottish alternative

Part of the Meals series

Common meals

Breakfast • Brunch • Lunch • Tea • Dinner • Supper

Components & courses

Amuse-bouche • Appetizer • Entrée • Main course • Side dish • Salad • Drink • Dessert • Fruit • Cheese • Nuts • Entremet

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Food • Eating • Cuisine • Etiquette • Buffet • Banquet

Bacon, eggs and capsicum frying on an electric barbecue, Jervis Bay, Australia

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 (or traditional) Irish breakfast, a full (or traditional) Scottish breakfast, a full Welsh breakfast^[6] or an Ulster Fry.^[7] The detailed composition of the breakfast varies from place to place. In Britain and Ireland, this cooked breakfast is often advertised as "Traditional English Breakfast" or "Traditional Irish Breakfast", but there is very little about it that is truly traditional in the historical sense, as it is, for the most part, a twentieth-century concoction.^{[citation needed]}

The name "Bacon and eggs" 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

The term "full breakfast" is used to differentiate it from the simpler continental breakfast of tea or 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. They are often served with condiments such as brown sauce or ketchup.

Some of the additional ingredients that may be included in a full breakfast are:

[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. Hash browns and baked beans are an occasional modern addition.

When an English breakfast is ordered to contain everything available it is often referred to as a Full English, or a Full Monty.

[edit] Full Irish breakfast

An Irish breakfast consisting of sausages, black and white pudding, bacon and fried eggs.

In 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, toast, sauteed, sliced potato, and fried tomato^[9]. Baked beans and sauteed mushrooms are also sometimes included^[10], as well as liver (although popularity has declined in recent years), and brown soda bread^{[citation needed]}. A full Irish breakfast may be accompanied with a strong Irish Breakfast tea such as Barry's Tea, Lyons Tea, or Bewley's breakfast blend served with milk. Fried potato bread, farl, potato farl or toast is often served as an alternative to brown soda bread.

[edit] Ulster Fry

A full Ulster Fry served in Belfast, Northern Ireland.

An Ulster Fry is a dish similar to the Irish fry or the Full English, and is popular throughout Ulster (hence the name).

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), potato bread^[11] and wheaten farl (though often sliced wheaten bread is used as the farl form is increasingly hard to find). Other common components include mushrooms, baked beans or pancake. All this is traditionally fried, however in recent decades, people have taken to grilling the ingredients instead.

The Ulster Fry is often served for breakfast, 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 the television channel BBC Two Northern Ireland used a station ID during local opt-outs from national UK programming which featured the BBC Two logo eating an Ulster Fry.

[edit] Full Scottish breakfast

In Scotland, the traditional breakfast is porridge, but the "Full Scottish Breakfast", along with the usual eggs, bacon and sausage, is usually differentiated by Scottish-style black pudding, haggis and tattie scones. It may also include fried tomato, baked beans, fruit pudding (also fried), and oatcakes. In some instances, the regular "link" sausage is replaced with square sliced sausage also known as Lorne sausage.

More broadly, Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable refers to a Scotch breakfast as "a substantial breakfast of sundry sorts of good things to eat and drink".^[12]

[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]} Sometimes however, a "Full Welsh breakfast" will be listed on a Welsh hotel menu, but be identical in content to a Full English Breakfast.

[edit] North America

bacon and "over-easy" eggs

A full American breakfast consists of bacon, eggs, hash browns or home fries, toast or some other bread, fruit or juice, and coffee. It is often referred to as a "country breakfast" in many areas of the Midwestern United States. The terms "fry" and "full breakfast" are not generally used in North America, though hotels generally 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 contains some combination of eggs, grits, toast or biscuits with white gravy, hash browns, potato pancakes or "breakfast potatoes", bacon, sausage, ham or steak, other meats such as scrapple or liver pudding, pancakes, cinnamon rolls or similar sweet pastries, all served with coffee and juice (usually orange or grapefruit).

In Canada, a full breakfast would be very similar to an American breakfast, but would sometimes contain Back bacon instead of strip bacon (although strip bacon is still common).

[edit] Central America

Ingredients include ham, sausage or bacon, eggs, much like a full breakfast elsewhere. A distinguishing feature is that fry jacks are also eaten, these being fried pieces of dough, similar to beignets or sopapillas. It can also include items like toast, pancakes, or hashbrowns. Fresh orange juice is often added as a drink. Guatemala's version of the full breakfast includes fried plantains, tortillas, and refried black beans.

[edit] See also

Look up full breakfast in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Food portal

[edit] References

[edit] External links

Wikibooks Cookbook has a recipe/module on English Breakfast