Author(s): Andrew Dalby

Food

The most important meal of the day is also one of the most diverse. Breakfast varies 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 start the day with eggs, cereal and doughnuts, the Japanese eat rice and miso soup, and the Yoruba enjoy maize porridge and beans. But while we know that you drink tea with your eggs and bacon in Britain and hot chocolate with churros in Spain, we don't know how the morning meal came to be. The Breakfast Book collects stories of breakfast around the world in an attempt to pin down the mottled history of eating in the morning. In search of what people have thought and written about breakfast - and tasted - Andrew Dalby traces the meal's origins back to the Neolithic revolution. He follows the trail from the ancient Near East and classical Greece to modern Europe and across the globe, rediscovering stories of breakfast in 3,000 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 history of this inimitable meal and will make an ideal morning companion to kedgeree, croissants and noodle soup alike.