English breakfast

Bacon, sausages, eggs, grilled tomato, mushrooms, baked beans, black pudding and toast or fried bread, all on one plate with a pot of tea: the full English breakfast is less a recipe than a roll call, and every café, hotel and household argues about which members are compulsory. The form took shape in the country houses of the Victorian era, where the breakfast sideboard was a display of wealth, and it was carried into the twentieth century by railway hotels and then by the working-class caff, where it became a cheap, filling start to a shift. Scotland adds tattie scones and sometimes haggis, Ireland white pudding and soda bread, Wales laverbread and cockles, and the Ulster fry has its own rules. The phrase full English on a menu means all of it; a plate missing black pudding or beans is a partial English and should be sold as one.