A Brief History of the American Breakfast

Definitions:

Breakfast: Literally, to "break fast". Fasting from Supper of one day to noon the next day. An edict of the Catholic Church given in 1300's so as to avoid the deadly sin of "gluttony".

Pork: Meat from the pig/swine. Not native to the Western Hemisphere and Australia. Brought to Mexico, Central and South America by the Spanish and to America by John Smith and the first Colony at Jamestown.

Amish: Followers, but separate sect, of the Mennonite Christians founded in the 1500's during the Reformation.

Grits: A native American preparation of coarse ground kernels of Corn modified over the years primarily in the Southern States.

Hash: Left-over meats of Beef and sometimes Pork Run through a grinder, mixed with chopped onions, green peppers, salt and pepper; Fried and served with a poached egg.

Black Pudding: The congealed (thickened) blood from pigs and cows, mixed with chopped bits of the meats and fat and run through a meat grinder into a pan of prepared chopped onions, green peppers, oatmeal, bread and potato bit to add stiffness to the blood. It is then stuffed into the intestine, sausage like.

Trencher: 1. A large square, wood platter, characterized by a trench, cut near the edge of the platter on all four sides. It collects the juices of the carved meats and vegetables.

2. Smaller versions of the platter used as plates during the middle-ages.

Trencherman: A person with a big appetite.

If one was looking for an interesting subject to write about, you would probably not choose breakfast, and certainly, I was one of those. But for the past month of research I found breakfast one of the most fascinating subjects I could have chosen.

My routine, since childhood was simple enough; normal you might say.
I had hot oatmeal, cream of wheat, malt O meal and cornmeal, during the winter months and various cold cereals like cheerios, kix, corn flakes etc, during the summer.
On Sunday my mom would whip up things like Hot cakes with bacon and eggs and even the occasional eggs benedict or Hash with the poached egg on top. But I never gave a thought to how it all came about, it was just...well...normal.

My first thought in writing about this subject was to find out what the ancients were eating in the mornings and so I began with Egypt and the fact that the written word probably begins there for Western Civilization at about 4000 BC. Surprisingly there wasn't much to learn there for it seems the primary "start the day" meal for all of those early civilizations was various forms of bread dipped in wine or lacking that, in flavored water (tea) and a little later Kafe (coffee).

Fast forward to Rome at about 2500-2000 BC. Breakfast was not something people did  as a  routine so the mid-day meal was usually the first formal meal of the day. However, Rye bread dipped in wine was mentioned as breakfast food.

At the time of Christ, fish was also mentioned but not as a daily routine. We assume then that Bread was probably the main Breakfast food with wine, of course, and possibly cheese.

During the middle ages, the Catholic Church issued a ban on eating breakfast so as not to commit the deadly sin of "gluttony" And the Noblemen and Royal's of that era considered eating in the morning a sign of weakness. But a Ray of sanity was just over the  horizon and begins with the repelling of the Catholic Church by Martin Luther.
 He had been a Jesuit priest and objected to many things the Pope in Rome stood for. The inquisition being one of them. Other reformers appeared such as John Calvin and Menno Simons, the founder of the Mennonites. and it was the Mennonite and later the Amish who agreed that breaking fast at mid-day was a good idea if you didn't have any work to do, such as being a Friar or Monk or Priest.

But for the farming lifestyle of the Amish which was to get up at 4 in the morning to milk cows, clean stalls, gather eggs, feed the stock and have it all done before 6am when they decided that the thing to do was break- fast at that time of the morning. The break-fast was a big meal because it had to restore calories already used in morning chores, but last the until the noon meal as well ,with much work being accomplished along the way.

The Amish break-fast was something like this: Homemade oatmeal mush with fresh milk, pancakes, eggs and both bacon and sausage with bread and fresh butter. All washed down with fresh milk.

When word spread throughout Europe about the Amish eating habits, perpetually hungry peasants got in the act and spelled the death knell of the Gluttony laws. So the large morning meal now called breakfast, one word, was accepted as the norm.

Earlier than the Reformation, in England, King Henry VIII broke from the Catholic Church and he also decided that the dietary edict should be abandoned and so it was.
Henry was well know to be a great trencherman and indeed he was, so much so that since he didn't work (like the Amish) he became obese and died that way. But the stage was set, or table if you prefer, for the full English Breakfast, it was: Back or side meat (bacon) Sausage, eggs, baked beans, black pudding and bread washed down with Beer.
And it was the full English breakfast that came to America by the first Colonists.

On arrival at Jamestown the first Colonists ran into something that would change the dietary habits of nearly the entire world. It was corn, cultivated and eaten by the Native Americans.

While the Spanish had known about corn long before the arrival the British Colonists, they didn't really care much for it and since there was no mention of it in the Catholic Bible it was pretty much relegated to something the heathen Indians ate.
  
The Native American use of dried corn kernels, mashed into a coarse flour like substance, had immediate impact on the new arrivals and cornmeal mush was probably the first use of this new vegetable.

But in addition, the Colonists and subsequent shiploads of supplies and more settlers, brought with them, egg laying chickens that were domesticated, pigs, and potatoes and the great American breakfast was now in place. Somewhere along the line, black pudding and baked beans were eliminated from breakfast.

The breakfast of bacon or sausage, fried or scrambled eggs, hash browns and served up with toast and coffee. is the great breakfast unique to America.

In the Southern States, grits are substituted for hash browns.

Dad.