What did people used to eat for breakfast.

[forevercooking]

Years ago. When people all sat around the table for breakfast before one or both parents went off to work and the kids went to school. What was being cooked/prepared/eaten? I can't imagine men were off down a pit on a diet of cornflakes but maybe I'm wrong.

Porridge 🥣

Porridge, grapefruit, home made bread and butter
Bacon and eggs, home made bread and butter
Scrambled eggs and toast

My dad worked in steel making - hot, physical work, and had toast, cereal and coffee. And cycled 6 miles to and from work. Probably had two hot meals a day, one in the canteen and one at home. He also used to run marathons!

Ready Brek and it made us glow apparently.
Maybe it was radioactive.

I think servants in big houses in the 19th/early 20th century had porridge and bread and butter, so I guess that.

I think Cooked breakfast as we know it was originally a farming thing, but eaten later in the morning once a few hours work had been done. Also I think things like eggs and meat for breakfast would have been too expensive for many families on a daily basis, if they weren’t in a farming community which had cheap access.

Free heat is probably worth a bit of radioactivity

Grapefruit? That really is a modern idea of breakfast.

Most likely porridge they probably couldn't afford anything else. Unlikely they all sat round a table, dad would be long gone to work before the kids got up

In The Road To Wigan Pier, George Orwell writes about the coalminers taking bread and dripping and a flask of cold tea down the pit with them.

Tea and bread. Butter/jam optional according to the state of the household finances.

Well how long ago OP?
I'm mid fifties. Mum used to cook a couple of elements (a fried egg, couple of sausages) but there was always toast and cornflakes, whilst simultaneously ironing and packing lunches in a tiny, steamy kitchen. She left for the tube mid way through and the rest of us let ourselves out shortly after.

This never happened in most working class homes. The whole family eating breakfast together bit. Different shifts if factory/mines. The need to see to the livestock before eating breakfast for farmers.

Yes usually ate porridge or a bit of bread with a scraping of butter. Weak tea if urban, milk if rural & had a cow. Rural poor had better diets than urban poor.

Bacon and egg, sometimes with toast, sometimes with fried bread, sometimes with just… bread. Never sausages, though, they were always ‘tea’.

my DM did experiment with ReadyBrek, she thought porridge was difficult to clean up after (?) , but we all thought it tasted like cardboard ( not that we ever had cardboard, I hasten to say)

I don't think all the family sat round the table for breakfast except Sundays (Saturday was often a working day). I think most people would have had porridge, cereal or toast. Most people would not have had the money or time to make cooked breakfast.

My grandfather ate porridge every morning from a young lad right up to his death at age 90, no fruit with it, no sugar or toppings, just porridge made with water, not even milk.

@Allthegoodnamesarechosen ooh yes, fried bread! Forgotten that. Delish.

Sop.

My dad is 93.
His family never sat together for breakfast

Cereal for the kids, cornflakes have been around since the 20s I think!
Porridge or toast for grown-ups.
Cooked breakfast was only ever on a Sunday after mass, when you fasted till you got back home.

@TescoCustomerService my granny is 99. for breakfast she has eaten oatmeal made with water every day of her life 🙂 she has a sprinkling of salt in it (Scottish).

Cornflakes or other packet cereals are a recent thing and for people with a good ish income. I am in my 60s. My grandparents didn’t have family breakfasts and didn’t have ‘breakfast food’ they ate bread or leftovers from the night before before they went to work. Basically most of their meals were the same, that is there was no sense that meals at different times of the day had to have different types of food. My grandmothers cooked Eg. A stew and the family carried on eating it for subsequent meals until it was finished. That way food never got thrown away.

‘Breakfast food’ is quite a luxury and there are still some parts of the world where you just eat what is in the house.

I remember my dad having fried eggs and bacon or occasionally poached egg on toast before driving off to his office job in the 70s.

@Byfleet I was given grapefruit for breakfast in the seventies.

My dad is in his 70s, from Irish farming family. He remembers a pot of porridge and a pot of potatoes pretty much always on the fire/range. Depending on time of day, either of those made up the basis of their meals. A lot of homemade bread. Meat (stew) for dinner. Dinner at 1pm.

My mum's family were teachers so more likely to eat at "set" times. Family breakfast of tea, toast, cereal, eggs before all heading out to school/work. Dinner in the evening.

Fifties (middle class )child here. My dad always had a cooked breakfast, bacon, egg, black pudding,fried bread . Toast and marmalade afterwards. Bacon bought with rind on, so lots of fat for the fried egg and bread. Can’t remember him ever having scrambled or poached eggs. We kids used to eat porridge, with golden syrup, or a disgusting cereal called fru grains. We sometimes had weetabix I think. Cornflakes and I think Rice Krispies were available in shops but we never had them in our house. Very few other commercial cereals on sale. I can remember the excitement of ready break being introduced. Can’t remember what my mum ate , probably a bit of toast . The cooked bacon rinds btw were fed to next doors greyhound who used to come round to the kitchen door for them every morning ( our cat hated this dog and used to hide behind the door and jump out on him).