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.

Kippers
Smoked haddock

Does anybody remember the Little Chef Olympic Breakfast ?.

Theres a reason full english is the english breakfast its because a full cooked meal before going down the pits for a long shift etc... was normal. Fill up on eggs, tomato, black pudding, bread etc...

Quick grab and go foods like cerial and sandwhiches where very much the staple of city slickers (although I believe a lot of cerial also had some religeous uses for fasting etc...) but things like a full english, a roast dinner and high tea (which is a heavy potato and pie based cooked supper not to be confused with afternoon tea which is sandwhiches and cakes) where common staples of working class manual labor households.

A lot of food would be offal based in the old days though, every part of the animal was used and you can wack virtually anything in a pie.

My grandparents were born at/before the turn of the century (1900). Eggs were considered a luxury for breakfast. Meals comprised of lots of homemade bread, porridge for breakfast and through the day to fill hungry kids up as well as soups. They were lucky to have money for meat for meals later in the day. Dripping was a big thing as got the fats for energy, flavour from the meat and was easily transported. Lots of potatoes, pastry/dumpling type things and root vegetables. Nothing wasted. Much fitter and thinner than people are today.

A friend of mine dated a young aristo in her teens. Breakfast at the hall was put out in silver dishes with little burners underneath to keep it warm. There were fried kidneys and sweetbreads in addition to the usual stuff. The relationship didn’t last long .

My grandparents had High Tea. They would eat between 4 and 5pm. A piece of fish or meat, potatoes and veg (usually peas). Then a slice of malt loaf. Or some stewed fruit in the right season.

Then they would have Supper which was a couple of biscuits or toast and Horlicks at bedtime.

Grapefruit was readily available in a large tin, would last my mother a week, or more. At Christmas we would have it as a starter, fresh grapefruit. Sometimes she would have tinned prunes instead. She was, and is, super skinny. She would follow this with a small bowl of porridge.

Breakfast wasn't really a family meal, we were all on slightly different work and school starts. The rest of us would have variations of toast with butter and my mother's homemade jam, or cereal with milk. Juice was served in tiny glasses, concentrated from a can, diluted with water and stored in the fridge or, joy of joy, freshly squeezed when oranges were in season.

If my DS would eat porridge etc I would have fed it to him, wanting to be a good mum, as that's what I was taught! But he is autistic and has sensory issues with food, and will only eat two slices of toast, one with Nutella and one with peanut butter, every day (it's much easier, of course!).

@Rosehugger your dad sounds epic !!!

My dad use to have grapefruit and half a loaf in toast.
He also use to tip his tea into the saucer and slurp it from that - savage.

We always sat at the table. My father drove a lorry so he was up and gone before we were awake.
We usually had cereal or toast and jam. In winter it'd be porridge or cream of wheat.
When my dad was around for breakfast we'd had bacon, eggs, and toast
or one of his favourites cornmeal mush. There was something that came in a roll that was sliced and fried but I can't remember what it was.
She'd also make biscuits and gravy.

My dad (he's still with us, aged 89) was a coal miner. His shifts rarely coincided with breakfast so he'd have whichever meal was nearest to his departure time; for the first 10 years of my life, he was on 'nights regular', so had a cooked evening meal before he left for work.

If he WAS on "earlies" - meaning he'd leave the house at about 5am - he would have bread and jam or bread and dripping.

I now want a banana sandwich and will probably go and make one when I get home!

My grandma was bor in 1910 and as an adult had the same breakfast of a rasher of Ayrshire bacon and a fried egg followed by toast and marmalade. It was washed down with coffee from her percolator and a cod liver oil tablet. She was always in excellent health, never even a cold and died aged 90 after developing dementia.

I think she was unusual for her generation drinking coffee and not tea but she was relatively well off.

@WetLettuce2 Yes, he was rather fit but probably overdid things at times. I think of him as a good example but also to listen to your body rather more than he did and be a bit more moderate towards exercise. For all his fitness, hardly ever drinking alcohol and never touching a cigarette, he was the one who had probably with his joints and heart later in life, my mum is still going strong at 82 (likes a drink, has a sweet tooth, rather overweight, used to smoke 20 a day for many years) and my dad died three years ago.

problems rather than probably

Salty porridge in the winter. Egg on toast with tomatoes and bacon on Sundays after Mass. I remember my mother buying a packet of Frosties as a treat and her deciding it was too full of sugar to be good for you. She was right but I felt deprived of the frosty, sugary deliciousness.

Mid eighties us kids would have a bowl of cereal and a drink of water. At the weekends we could have fresh orange from the milkman. I was never allowed anything chocolatey/sugary it was always cornflakes, bran flakes or weetabix with no extras added.

Now I serve any cereal (they are all as bad as each other), along with other stuff.

My dad worked away so he would have whatever the hotel served. Mum would have a coffee and mashed banana on brown toast.

We would only ever have a cooked breakfast once we got into the 90s and we had guests to stay.

I was born in the late sixties, so was growing up during the seventies and early eighties.

It was almost always cereal for breakfast in our house. Weetabix, cornflakes, rice krispies or shredded wheat.

I liked most of it, but hated the mornings when shredded wheat had been put out. We were expected to eat it, but to me it was like string. Like putting milk on string. I even tried adding sugar to it to make it palatable but that didn't work either.

I googled fried bone for breakfast and it looks like it was a T-Bone steak they were demanding.

Yes, red herrings are a form of kippers.

I don’t know about my GPS, they passed away before I was 10. My DF had porridge or shredded wheat with hot milk. DM, I never saw her eat as this was in the 70’s and I suspect she wasn’t eating so that we could. I usually had toast, in the winter it was with beef dripping and in the summer with jam.

No idea what my dad had but my mum used to eat slimming pills she got from a dodgy doctor who was eventually busted by the news of the world 🤦🏻‍♀️

I had weetabix ready brek or dippy eggs

This. Then we had sausages and loads of toast and butter and tea. Bloody marvellous but only on Sunday (I’m 60)

Depends when you are going back too.

Pre-1900 it was probably porridge or toast.
Commercial cearals have been around since the 1920s, cornflakes, Quakers, weetabix.

Eggs and toast was definitely trendy.
Along with kippers.

There might also have been last nights leftovers although that was probably lunch rather than dinner.

Rather than breakfast. Sorry

In my mining family the porridge went on the range the night before and everyone took a bowl full. My mum used to hate visiting her gran in the 1960s because that was still how it worked and everything tasted of soot. Peas got the same treatment

Maternal grandparents (farmers): porridge with a tonne of sugar on, then bacon, fried potatoes (amazing- never been able to replicate my gran's- the world is a poorer place without them), fried egg, bread and thick butter.

Paternal grandparents (miner and pit accounts clerk): porridge, scrambled eggs on toast, bacon.

I'm genetically pre-disposed to loving bacon :-)

My kids usually have a hot breakfast now tbh- bacon and egg or sausage sandwich.They have an early start and a long time till lunch.