The Breakfast Book

by Andrew Dalby

You’ve heard it from doctors, nutritionists, and your breakfast is the most important meal of the day. It’s also one of the most diverse, varying greatly from family to family and region to region, even while individuals tend to eat the same thing every day. While Americans traditionally like to chow down on eggs, cereal, and doughnuts, the Japanese eat rice and miso soup, and New Zealanders enjoy porridge. But while we know bacon and sausage links belong alongside pancakes and waffles in the early morning hours, we don’t know how breakfast came to be. Taking a multifaceted approach to the story of the morning meal, The Breakfast Book collects narratives of breakfast in an attempt to pin down the mottled history of eating in the A.M.

 

In search of what people have thought and written—and tasted—about breakfast, Andrew Dalby traces the meal’s origins back to the Neolithic revolution. He follows the trail of toast crumbs from the ancient Near East and classical Greece to modern Europe and across the globe, rediscovering stories of breakfast in three thousand years of fiction, memoirs, and art. Using a multitude of entertaining breakfast facts, anecdotes, and images, he reveals why breakfast is so often the backdrop for unexpected meetings, why so many people eat breakfast out, and why this often silent meal is also so reassuring.

 
Featuring a selection of historic and contemporary breakfast recipes from around the world, The Breakfast Book is the first book to explore the history of this inimitable meal and will make an ideal morning companion to crumpets, deviled kidneys, and spanakopita alike.

Genres: Nonfiction, Food, Cooking, Culinary, History

232 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2013

About the author

Andrew Dalby (born Liverpool, 1947) is an English linguist, translator and historian who most often writes about food history.

Dalby studied at the Bristol Grammar School, where he learned some Latin, French and Greek; then at the University of Cambridge. There he studied Latin and Greek at first, afterwards Romance languages and linguistics. He earned a bachelor's degree in 1970. Dalby then worked for fifteen years at Cambridge University Library, eventually specializing in Southern Asia. He gained familiarity with some other languages because of his work there, where he had to work with foreign serials and afterwards with South and Southeast Asian materials. In 1982 and 1983 he collaborated with Sao Saimong in cataloguing the Scott Collection of manuscripts and documents from Burma (especially the Shan States) and Indochina; He was later to publish a short biography of the colonial civil servant and explorer J. G. Scott, who formed the collection.[1] To help him with this task, he took classes in Cambridge again in Sanskrit, Hindi and Pali and in London in Burmese and Thai.

Reviews

[Mir · Rating 2 out of 5]

karen gave me this book. Mine didn't come with the attached egg-holder, though; I think she must have kept that for herself because she is a cute things hoarder.



Thanks, karen!

I would characterize this as "mildly interesting." There were some pleasing trivia, but it felt overall rather bland and pointless.

Also, it suffered in a major way from a very Anglo-centric "Haha, look at these WEIRD things that non-English people eat for breakfast" attitude.

[dejah_thoris · Rating 4 out of 5]

Yes! This is the sort of food history I was looking for from Dalby in his Cheese book. Concise, well sourced (though I'd appreciate more historical sources than literary), and covering all aspects of breakfast while remaining organized enough to maintain a steady narrative. Overall, Dalby sticks to reviewing breakfast across history and then adds the element of space to discuss non-Western breakfasts, which is especially interesting for those of us more accustomed to the standard English or Continental breakfast. Illustrations are plentiful and I'm happy to report that I learned several fun facts from this book too. Recipes closing the book are in metric, which is a bit annoying as an American, but they aren't historical, so interested parties should be able to use them with little fuss.

[Amber · Rating 4 out of 5]

A rather good read, as long as one is genuinely and deeply interested in the origins, history, and, well POINT of breakfast. A few recipes in the back, but nothing too extraordinary. Made me want to try new kinds of breakfasts, though--and avoid sweet, American ones!