Full English breakfast

Posted by Gene Hawkins on August 12, 2003

In Reply to: Full English breakfast posted by Barney on August 07, 2003

: : : : : : : : : Another question from the Brit-coms on PBS: what do you get when someone serves a "full English breakfast"?

: : : : : : : : The full heart attack on a plate - bacon, sausages, fried eggs, fried bread, tomatoes, mushrooms and anything else there's room for. I go for the vegi-sausage version myself so I'm not an authority, but I get the impression that the full English is easier to find in Ireland these days.

: : : : : : : You forgot the black and white pudding, and the tinned beans!

: : : : : : What's black and white pudding? Beans for breakfast?

: : : : : Believe me, you'd rather not know, and yes, we eat baked beans for breakfast.

: : : : That will get you going in the morning.

: : : May I just say: "porridge and kippers"?

: : These days it seems to be :
: : fruit juice
: : the core : bacon, sausage, egg, tomato, mushroom, toast
: : often baked-beans (+ black-pudding - regional variation) also sometimes includes hash-brown type potato

: : more toast and preserve/jam/marmalade
: : coffee/tea

: : makes one drool.

: : I noticed that a mini-sausage equivalent to black-pudding is sometimes available in Belgium along with very streaky bacon and scrambled egg. White pudding is a northern addition - from the Borders/Scotland - never encounter it down Sarf.

: Black pudding is revolting as is tripe, liver, kidney and all other offal. In my entirely biased opinion nobody should eat such rubbish. Equally why does anybody in their right mind eat or drink chemically coloured and flavoured drinks and other food stuffs when the real thing tastes better, is just as cheap and is less likely to cause long term damage to your health. As you can see I'm neither a food faddist nor fascist, just a humble seeker after the truth and an all round well balanced human being.

None of which answers the initial question: what is black pudding? I believe it's similar to blood pudding, isn't it? We can't get it readily in the US (at least under the name of black pudding), though I usually have some when I'm in the UK.