Irish breakfast: Encyclopedia II - Irish breakfast - History

Irish breakfast - History

The traditional cooked breakfast is a relatively modern invention. Before the arrival of the potato in the middle of the 17th Century, the Irish diet reflected the nature of the cattle based economy. Meat was mostly the preserve of the gentry whilst the poor made do with oats, barley, milk, milk products and offal. The practice of bleeding cattle and mixing the blood with milk and butter (much like the Masai of today) was not uncommon.

After the potato arrived in Ireland it quickly became the dominant source of food for the poor. From the late 17th century to until the late 19th century most people in Ireland lived on a meagre diet that consisted mostly of potatoes cultivated at a subsistence level. Potatoes were also used as a food for pigs that were fattened-up and slaughtered at the approach of the cold winter months. Much of the slaughtered pork would have been cured to provide ham and bacon that could be stored over the winter. In Ireland bacon is traditionally boiled and not cut into rashers and fried. The reliance on potatoes as a staple crop meant that the people of Ireland were vulnerable to poor potato harvests, consequently a number of what today might be called 'lesser famines' occurred throughout the 17th and 18th centuries. The first great famine of 1739 was the result of extreme cold weather but the famine of the late 1840s (see Irish potato famine) which lasted several years led to the death of nearly 1,000,000 people and the emigration of another 2,000,000 was caused by potato blight. After the famine some 3,000,000 people were left destitute. Throughout this period most people would have eaten a simple breakfast of potatoes or porridge washed down with ale and later tea and would have had a more substantial dinner at around midday.

The traditional fried breakfast emerged in the houses of wealthy farmers or landowners in the late 19th century. For the more well-to-do, an array of breakfast dishes would be laid out buffet style in much the same way as hotels do today. Up until this period, fresh meat was generally considered a luxury except for the most affluent. Chickens were not cultivated on a large scale until the second half of the 19th century. The emergence of town grocers in the 1880s allowed people to exchange surplus eggs etc. and for the first time purchase other food items and diversify their diet. Only with the relative increase in the wealth of the general populace in the 20th century was the consumption of the meal commonplace amongst the working classes.

The opening of Ulysses by James Joyce contains a famous Irish breakfast scene.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "History", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki