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.

My grandad who would have been 100 by now had Kippers most mornings. He didn't do a manual job after the war though. Grandma who also worked was tea and toast, (with dripping or jam)which she did for her four kids too.
They were westcountry based so fish was abundant.

I'm in my 60's. My DF was a lad in the 1940's. He remembered bread and dripping or porridge (made with water). There were three kids in the family and they ate together with their DM overseeing. His DF worked in the mills and started very early so they didn't eat together. They were poor - the idea of bacon (!) and eggs for breakfast would have been amazing to them. They were the sort of poor where their DM scraped their toothbrushes on the chimney side to load them with soot so they could clean their teeth, and they wore wooden clog shoes (no socks) in the depths of winter. They lived in Yorkshire and it was bloody cold in winter.

Poor, northern working class childhood, but with a father who had been a chef for Cunard.
Kippers, kedgeree, grapefruit, bacon and egg, omelette, beans on toast, homemade cinnamon buns.
That sort of thing.

There was a big advertising campaign in the 1970s along the lines of 'go to work on an egg' so I guess that was trying to increase egg consumption.

Porridge/Ready Brek was fairly typical. Or toast.

Yes. Never happened in my house and I was born in the 1950s. I had porridge made with water with the top of the milk and golden syrup on top, cornflakes or toast. I don't remember ever all sitting down to it. The occasional cooked breakfast was a rare treat but not on a work/school day.

My granddad had half a grapefruit with his breakfast every morning with a teaspoon of sugar on. He had a special spoon with a serrated edge on it. I remember him having this in the 70s which is nearly 50 years ago now so not modern! Also not fancy either! Maybe he picked up the habit from his Navy days as he spent a lot of time in different countries.

Grandparents when I was young would have bacon, eggs, bread. But not first thing, the cows would be brought in and milked first, although grandad would have a slice of bread and butter and a strong tea when he got up. Then there would be breakfast later. There was never toast, which I find odd looking back.
Things I find interesting are other country's breakfasts. We had some Israeli friends and when DD stayed with them, there was salad on the breakfast table.

We had kippers sometimes, iirc we had to eat them with plenty of bread and butter because of the bones, DM would only buy butter as well because magazine was for cooking, even though we weren't well off.

DF didn't go off and work down the mines, he was a factory worker that took a large lunchbox of sandwiches, often fish paste to work with him

You forgot shreddies (bizarre name, now I think about)

The answer, OP is bread. Because for much history, for most of the population, bread is almost all they ate.

@MrsMinted thats interesting about dripping. Making lard with onion and bacon bits is very common in polish culture. Many of the men who are builders will have a slice of sourdough with lard and maybe some pickles or slice of tomato on it.
The drippings are so delicious.
I find it fascinating that these sorts of diets are still quite common in post communist countries, although very quickly colourful cereal is taking over.

I'm mid 50s, mum would eat a slice of Nimble standing up, always on a constant diet. Me and my brother would have readybrek or toast.

Well, now I want some Ready Brek and fried bread.

My grandad worked down the pit and had bacon eggs fried bread (!) and beans or tomatoes every morning.

The answer, OP is bread. Because for much history, for most of the population, bread is almost all they ate.

We had bread with nearly every meal unless we had potatoes, even if we had a tin of fruit we were expected to eat bread and butter with it

Nimble! My Mum would eat it with a thin smear of jam, no butter, because fat was the enemy, washed down with a glass of PLJ.

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

this is much what we ate in the 70s and what my kids eat now! But with smoked salmon and more fruit thrown in rather than bacon. Love overnight oats too rather than hot porridge.

My dad had a manual job and 5am start with toast and porridge or eggs

@User84 - yes! I'm 51 and My aunt ran a hotel in Cornwall in the 70s (through to the 2000s) and grapefruit was indeed a starter on the menu, served in stainless steel little cocktail dishes, back in the days when you had dinner, bed and breakfast. Seems bizarre now

In winter, Ready Brek with golden syrup, toast & marmite and hot Ribena.

@Byfleet Grapefruit was not easily available or affordable before that and has so few calories it wouldn’t have been a sensible thing to eat before a day of physical work.

it wasn’t eaten as the breakfast, but as a piece on the side as part of a bigger breakfast. I recall 60 years ago all the adults in our family had it as part of breakfast, half a grapefruit with a dusting of sugar on top on the side with the main generally being porridge of a weekday and toast on the weekend. It was either eaten before or after the porridge/toast, can’t recall. It was a common fruit for us, no more expensive than oranges/mandarins/apples/pears and many people had a grapefruit tree in the backyard and only purchased to supplement or when out of season so came in from areas with right climate at that time of year, like most fruit that is year round.

Urgh, the fish paste sandwiches and the smell bleurgh.
When finances were bad there was lard on bread with a tiny sprinkle of sugar, sugar butties, I could never stomach that.

This is what my dad has every morning (Scottish, in his mid 70s). He adds a splash of cold milk at the end.

Bread and butter and weak tea for everyone but the working man - my grandfather - would have an egg or two.
Other side of family who are farmers, nothing for breakfast when you get up, but after a few hours of work breakfast. Often bread and dripping. As life styles improved more a cheap cooked breakfast.

Also for our family, for some strange reason, eggs for breakfast were reserved for if you were sick. Then you got runny egg and buttery toast fingers to dip. But you had to be sick🤯. No idea why. Eggs were a dinner item as part of a fry up.

I am mid-forties but have/had very long-lived grandparents and great-uncles/aunts.

Farming family in Devon - when I stayed with them as a child we would have hardboiled eggs, homemade wholemeal bread, jam, butter. All together including several farm workers at about 8am after they'd finished milking. Farm workers had two or three eggs and my great aunt had special double egg cups. She made all the bread in massive batches and cooked it in the Aga. Porridge probably in the winter though we were usually there in summer. Milk in massive jugs still warm from the milking parlour!

Grandparents, Yorkshire - grandmother SAHM, grandfather worked as an insurance clerk. Cornflakes, homemade bread and jam/butter/marmalade. Eggs at the weekend. Porridge sometimes.

Other grandparents, also Yorkshire but they mainly lived in Cambridgeshire before I was born - homemade warm bread rolls on Sunday with butter and homemade marmalade. They adopted new 'health foods' so would have All-Bran and yogurt on a normal weekday, they bought cereals for us as children. They both grew up in well-to-do households in the Victorian tradition and would have had kippers, kedgeree, porridge etc.