The Breakfast Book
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the breakfast book The Breakfast Book Andrew Dalby REAKTION BOOKS Published by Reaktion Books Ltd 33 Great Sutton Street London EC1V 0DX, UK www.reaktionbooks.co.uk First published 2013 Copyright © Andrew Dalby 2013 The right of Andrew Dalby to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers. Printed and bound in China British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Dalby, Andrew, 1947– The breakfast book. 1. Breakfasts. 2. Breakfasts—History. I. Title 394.1’252-dc23 ISBN 978 1 78023 086 3 contents Foreword 7 Prologue: Four Breakfasts 9 one Breakfast: Origin, Evolution and Name 23 two Breakfast Through Time 49 three Breakfast Across Space 85 four Variables 121 five Feeling for Breakfast 161 Epilogue: Damer’s Muffins 185 recipes 193 sources of quotations 212 bibliography 222 acknowledgements 225 photo acknowledgements 226 index 227 Foreword knew at the age of twelve that I would write a breakfast book one I day, after reading in Isaac Asimov’s Inside the Atom (1956: probably remaindered, like all the other books Uncle Jim gave me as Christmas presents) the claim that scientists would soon split atoms as commonly ‘as you and I eat potatoes for breakfast’. How strange that Asimov should believe his average reader would eat potatoes for breakfast! I had to sort that matter out sooner or later. I claim that there is as yet not a single general history of breakfast in existence, global or otherwise, and I can name at least one reason for this. When attempting to write histories of human habits, such as meals and mealtimes, the honest historian will remember and repeat Arnold Palmer’s warning (in Movable Feasts, 1952): ‘Hardly anything in this book is quite, quite true.’ Glance at the discoveries of which I am proud- est: are they quite, quite true? For example, the surprising parallels among the four breakfasts, spanning 32 centuries, that are narrated in the prologue; the tragedy of Damer’s muffins, told in the epilogue; the estimate in chapter Five that Ulysses offers the second longest exploration in literature of the consciousness of a single would-be breakfaster; and the claim in the same chapter to have identified the longest of all such explorations . This is both less and more than a global history: there are indeed several histories here. The anthropological and linguistic origins of breakfast are told in chapter One; a chronological history focusing on Europe (the only continent, I believe, for which anything resembling such a story can be fully told) is presented in chapter Two, a geographical 7 The Breakfast Book history in chapter Three; the social and psychological constraints on breakfast are teased out in chapters Four and Five. The images, com - plementing the text, help to show what people have seen, or wanted to see, as they breakfast. There are even statistics, but statistics tell us little, and breakfast statistics less than most. What people do, and what they think they do, are questions more revealingly answered when they write fiction and autobiography. The history that I offer here grows out of what people have said about breakfast, what they have meant and what they have thought. 8 Prologue: Four Breakfasts he world’s first literary breakfast took place in a mountain hut on Tthe Greek island of Ithaca in the year 1174 bc. Ten years after Troy fell to the Greek army, Odysseus has arrived home, incognito, after his long wanderings. The two of them, Odysseus and Eumaios, were preparing breakfast in the hut as the sun rose, after stirring up the fire and sending the herdsmen out with the pigs to pasture . Suddenly Odysseus turned to the noble swineherd and spoke winged words: ‘Eumaios, some friend of yours or someone familiar is on his way to us – because I hear footsteps, and your dogs are not barking but fawning.’ He had not even finished speaking when his own dear son stood in the doorway. Startled, Eumaios jumped up. The bowls that he was working with, mixing fiery wine, fell out of his hands . Odysseus went and sat down again, and the swineherd made a pile of green brushwood, with fleeces on it; there Odys seus’ dear son sat down. The swineherd put before them platters of roast meat that had been left uneaten the day before, and quickly piled bread alongside in baskets, and poured honey-sweet wine into a mug. He himself sat down opposite godly Odysseus, and they set their hands to the food that was ready. 9 The Breakfast Book Rembrandt, Belshazzar’s Feast, c. 1636–8, oil on canvas. A supper, but it captures the surprise that is typical of breakfast. If poets told the truth, and if the traditional chronology of the Trojan War had anything to do with reality, this breakfast would be a verifiable, datable fact and The Breakfast Book would start here. Things are not so simple. As the nine Muses once admitted to Homer’s rival Hesiod, ‘We know how to tell many lies that seem to be true.’ The Muses inspire poets, and for that reason poets, too, tell many lies. Now we know that the Odyssey, in which this breakfast is narrated, was written down several hundred years after the Trojan War, at what - ever date archaeologists eventually agree to place that war, if indeed they all one day agree that it took place. Modern researchers on oral epics, concurring with Hesiod and the Muses, doubt whether even the most crucial historical details are reliably transmitted by poets over such a 10 Prologue: Four Breakfasts long period. Those crucial details would include the homeland of Odysseus, his date, the reality of his wanderings and his precise connection with the Trojan War, if he had any connection with it at all. We must finally accept not just that there is doubt whether this breakfast happened, but that the probabilities are against it. So let’s take a second literary breakfast, dated 1,200 years after the one on Ithaca and located on the shore of the Sea of Tiberias, 1,000 miles to the southeast. There together were Simon Peter, Thomas called the Twin, Nathanael from Cana in Galilee, the sons of Zebedaios, and two of the other disciples. Simon Peter says to them, ‘I’m going fishing.’ They say to him, ‘We’re coming with you.’ Duccio di Buoninsegna, Christ Appears to His Disciples at the Sea of Tiberias (from the Maestà altar, Siena), 1311. This, one of the oldest evocations of the incident, shows the miraculous catch. 11 The Breakfast Book They went out and got into their boat, and they caught nothing all night. When dawn came Jesus was standing on the shore, but the disciples didn’t know that it was Jesus. So Jesus says to them, ‘Haven’t you got any relish, boys?’ They say to him, ‘No.’ He said to them, ‘Drop your net on the right side of the ship and you’ll find something.’ They did so, and now they couldn’t pull it up for the quantity of fish. And the disciple Jesus loved says to Peter, ‘It’s the master.’ When Simon Peter heard that it was the master he pulled his cloak around himself, because he had nothing on, and dived into the sea. The other disciples came to land in their boat (they were not far out, about two hundred cubits) dragging the net with the fish in it. When they jumped out on shore, they see embers laid, and a fish set over it, and bread. Jesus says to them, ‘Fetch some of the fish you’ve caught.’ Simon Peter came up and pulled the net to shore, laden with a hundred and fifty-three big fish. Even though there were so many the net wasn’t split. Jesus says to them, ‘Come and have breakfast.’ None of the disciples cared to ask him, ‘Who are you?’ They knew it was the master. Jesus goes and gets the bread and gives it out to them, and the fish as well. This was the third time that Jesus appeared to his disciples after waking from the dead. The lines that follow this story tell us that the disciple Jesus loved was the reporter of the incident and was also the writer of the Gospel. Some accept this as literally true; many do not. If we accept it, we are accepting this narrative as an eyewitness report, and therefore as very strong evidence that the breakfast really took place on the shore of the Sea of Tiberias in the year of the Crucifixion (around ad 35). As to who the visitor was, the reader still has to decide. Now a third literary breakfast. The setting is Fressingfield in Suffolk, well over 1,000 miles northwest of Ithaca; we are once more leaping ahead 1,200 years or thereabouts; and our source is the popular play 12 Prologue: Four Breakfasts Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay. Lord Lacy and his friends Ermsby and Warren have ridden through the night. Lacy is about to redeem his promise to marry the keeper’s daughter. Will she take him? Lacy: Come on, my wags, we’re near the Keeper’s lodge. Here have I oft walked in the watery meads And chatted with my lovely Margaret .