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How the Tudors Invented Breakfast

historyextra.com

40 pointsThevet21 comments

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Few of us in the 21st century would dream of embarking upon our days on an empty stomach

In my circles, I'd estimate only a narrow minority have a breakfast beyond caffeine. I certainly don't eat before noon.

PS: more evidence, after I searched to investigate:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/7593760/Two-thirds-of...

Men skip their morning meal the most, with 74 per cent admitting lunch is their first meal of the day.

Between feeling very slightly queasy for the first thirty minutes or so after I wake up, and not wanting toothpaste flavor in my mouth within half an hour on either side of when I eat, I almost never eat breakfast. Been that way as long as I can remember. Didn't realize I might be in the majority.

The toothpaste flavor is from sodium lauryl sulfate, and is completely gone if you use SLS-free toothpaste.

Why would anybody do that!? That's like taking the chocolate out of a chocolate chip cookie!

SLS is an irritant and can exacerbate mouth ulcers. For example, if you bite the inside of your cheek or if you bite your tongue, it will heal faster with an SLS-free toothpaste. SLS-free toothpastes are also much milder in minty-ness.

I switched to SLS-free (Squigle) about a year ago and couldn't be happier.

This.

My wife suffered with ulcers all her life until a comment on the NHS website suggested cutting out SLS. She followed the advice and very quickly stopped getting ulcers. I mentioned it in passing to our dentist and he said he won't use a products with SLS in for himself or his family ...

"The most significant difference was the traveller’s breakfast. Often we find this consisted of nothing but ale or wine."

It appears ale and wine has been replaced by coffee. That's usually all I consistently have before lunch.

I particularly like an excerpt from Benjamin Franklin's autobiography of when he worked at a printing press. Apparently it was quite common to drink on the job for "strength" if you were a manual labourer.

"My companion at the press drank every day a pint before breakfast, a pint at breakfast with his bread and cheese, a pint between breakfast and dinner, a pint at dinner, a pint in the afternoon about six o'clock, and another when he had done his day's work. I thought it a detestable custom; but it was necessary, he suppos'd, to drink strong beer, that he might be strong to labor. I endeavored to convince him that the bodily strength afforded by beer could only be in proportion to the grain or flour of the barley dissolved in the water of which it was made; that there was more flour in a pennyworth of bread; and therefore, if he would eat that with a pint of water, it would give him more strength than a quart of beer. He drank on, however, and had four or five shillings to pay out of his wages every Saturday night for that muddling liquor; an expense I was free from. And thus these poor devils keep themselves always under."

[1] http://www.let.rug.nl/usa/biographies/benjamin-franklin/chap...

In Canada only 1/3rd of people don't eat breakfast. So this sounds like a widely divergent thing.

---- excerpt ----

Aragorn: Gentlemen, we do not stop 'til nightfall.

Pippin: What about breakfast?

Aragorn: You've already had it.

Pippin: We've had one, yes. What about second breakfast?

[Aragorn turns and walks off in disgust]

Merry: I don't think he knows about second breakfast, Pip.

Pippin: What about elevenses? Luncheon? Afternoon tea? Dinner? Supper? He knows about them, doesn't he?

Merry: I wouldn't count on it.

----------------

:-)

Then how does breakfast appear in The Odyssey?

It's not a good idea to judge articles by their headlines. Typically, the headlines aren't written by the author.

The article itself says that breakfast became a more regular occurrence due to longer, fixed workdays. Some people ate breakfast before then, it just wasn't a set routine the way lunch and dinner were.

In fact, says my quick text search, the string "Tudor" does not show up once after the headline.

But the thrust of the article is that in England eating breakfast became the norm during the 16th century, a period almost coterminous with the rule of the Tudors (Henry VII took the throne in 1485; Elizabeth I died in 1603).

My grandparents were farmers - and they've always had breakfast. They had to get up early to milk the cows. I don't know their exact morning routine, but they had breakfast before or after milking the cows in the morning (I would say before milking the cows).

I think breakfast works pretty well for a farmer's livestyle. So I wonder, if this is really the big exception.

And there was always a break in the morning (at 9 o'clock) from a "second breakfast" - or a small lunch break.

>[16th century] The main meal, dinner, was held at about 10.30 or 11 in the morning, and supper about five hours later.

Hmm, I wonder what was the typical time for dinner in the 19th century? I.e. when Mr Bingley was invited "to dine" with Bennets, at what time he was expected to show up?

My first thought was "does this have anything to do with the invention of street lights and the time people could now get to working?"

Yes, but Tolkien invented Second Breakfast. No comparison.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_breakfast

"It is traditional in Bavaria, in Poland, and in Hungary. In Bavaria or Poland, special dishes are made exclusively to be eaten during second breakfast."

IIRC, Czechs (and Slovaks too, perhaps) have something called "svacina" which fits this definition of a second breakfast.

There are other places in the world too that have this custom: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiffin

In Portugal it's called "bucha".

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