What do you think of when I say the word breakfast? You're probably thinking eggs and
bacon maybe pancakes or waffles maybe cereal donut coffee those are all the things you're
thinking of right. But in the 18th century breakfast was nothing like what we think of
as a modern breakfast those are way beyond what breakfast would be. The concept of breakfast in
the 18th century is very different especially for the working man yes the occasional person in the
18th century did have eggs and bacon for breakfast but usually that was in a social setting. If you
had guests over and you were eating all together for breakfast then it was a special meal and yes
you would bring all those special things out but the working man is not in that situation
he just wants to get his stomach full to get him through the morning until he gets to lunch.
And so the breakfasts were all set around that concept and we can can see those references over
and over if we look at the books and the writings in the 18th century whether it's a workhouse menu
for the breakfast or a working man's menu where he's talking about what he's going to need to get
the day going. Those are all very very similar they always have things like bread and cheese
maybe beer oatmeal is probably the one that shows up the vast majority of the time it might be
called one thing or the other but in our parlance today we're going to just call it oatmeal. They
might call it milk porridge or pottage or all these great names for it but it's just oatmeal.
Here's a menu from a book that's about hospitals prisons and workhouses what's for breakfast? "On
Sunday breakfast is four ounces each of bread and beer sufficient not exceeding a pint each
on Monday breakfast was one pint of beef or mutton broth well thickened with oatmeal and
four ounces of bread Tuesday is four ounces of bread and a pint of milk pottage" again
just basically milk oatmeal. Here's the diet for prisoners of war in a Liverpool hospital
and the low diet is water gruel or panata which is made with breadcrumbs and milk rice
gruel milk pottage or broth eight ounces of bread butter and for a drink toast and water.
In an 18th century book called The Farmer's tour they talk about a farmer's breakfast Monday he's
going to have beef broth on Wednesday beef broth breakfast for a Thursday is just milk
in the summer and milk broth in the winter time. William Ellis talks about farm workers
in the 18th century he says the men generally eat five times a day at their first setting out they
eat a little bread and cheese or apple pie with the draft of small beer or half a pint of strong
beer per man. At eight o'clock in the morning some send for breakfast boiled milk crumbled
with bread others milk porridge with bread others posset with bread or bread and cheese.
So far we've covered working men maybe people in prisons or hospitals or work houses those kinds
of settings but what about rich people in the 18th century? What are they eating for breakfast? Now
we do have social settings where they talk about these amazing breakfasts with all these eggs and
bacon and all that good stuff but most of the time they're just eating a simple meal and a
great example is William Bird III's Diary in the early 18th century he's in Virginia and
he talks about having breakfast and almost always it is simply boiled milk that's what he says. Now
he might just mean milk warmed up like milk broth or he might actually mean a milk porridge or milk
pottage along basically oatmeal again. Here we have the breakfast of the late Duke of Bridgewater
an abstemious man but his breakfast was a mess of water gruel a very very simple breakfast. Benjamin
Franklin's autobiography also mentioned this classic breakfast of bread cheese and beer and
you say well now why do you have a breakfast of bread cheese and beer? Well most of us don't want
to spend a lot of time cooking for breakfast and that's exactly what's going on in the 18th century
most of these breakfasts don't take very much time even the oatmeal is called Hasty Pudding because
it's a pudding that only takes a few minutes to make. And in the case of bread and cheese
well you just need to slice them and drink them down with your beer and your breakfast is done.
As we continue to dig into the research of the 18th century we will find the
occasional very strange breakfast and here's one that references drinking mulled wine and
cakes probably to get over a night of revelry. Sometimes when we're researching we'll find some
of the most interesting things in very kind of odd places there's a book from the 18th century that
has to do with helping people understand French and English so if you're trying to learn French
and it's a book that's written with French on one side English on the other and it has a dialogue
going on and here's a dialogue about breakfast. Will you have breakfast? Is it time for breakfast?
What will you have for breakfast? bread and butter milk porridge water gruel all that is children's
meat bring us something else there are sausages and Petty Patees shall I bring a Gammon of bacon
yes bring it we shall cut a slice of it lay it on a napkin on that table and give us plates and
knives and forks notice I didn't have any spoons you promised me fried eggs and bacon here are some
eat new laid eggs here are some soft eggs in the shell this is a rotten egg so an egg be but fresh
I care not whether it be soft or hard. There are many books in the 18th century
describing the plight of the poor or trying to help them out giving them recipes and here's
a recipe for oatmeal that tries to go above and beyond but still be very very inexpensive
it's called savory water gruel that sounds good just right there doesn't it? You take
some water and oatmeal and then you shred in onions or leeks and that's going to give you
this new kind of flavor so you don't get burnt out on that same oatmeal flavor over and over.
Imagine this dish that might be called milk pottage or milk porridge it might be called
gruel or water gruel or even Hasty Pudding they're all basically the same thing and today we would
call it oatmeal. Here's the description that's in one of the 18th century texts. It says Hasty
Pudding is made by putting oatmeal gradually into boiling water and stirring it about with a
peeled stick and letting it continue to boil in that thickened state until sufficiently enough.
When it is taken off the fire it is poured out into pans into pots or dishes to cool and then
eaten them with butter or more commonly with skimmed milk it is an agreeable nutritive and
healthy food and is generally breakfast and supper for the laboring people in the Northern
parts. Let's make up a dish of this porridge or Hasty Pudding so we can try out the 18th century
breakfast. We're going to take our water and start to get it to boil now some of these recipes are a
little bit different they use a mix of 50 50 milk and water but we get that boiling or just to boil
and then we slowly stir in our oatmeal or in some cases we might use a different kind of grain we
could use flour or even cornmeal if we were in North America but we slowly stir that in and it
will start to really get a bubble and boil we might need to turn down the heat a little bit
and it'll start to thicken and thicken and when it gets to about the thickness you like we're
going to take it off the fire we may even take it off the fire just a little bit earlier than that
because it'll continue to absorb those liquids in there and get thicker and thicker as it goes.
When we think about breakfast we're thinking about eggs and bacon maybe we're thinking
about pancakes and toast but this is the breakfast of the vast majority of people
in the 18th century and that's it they're having this whether they're workmen maybe
they're Sailors and this is their breakfast even rich people in the 18th century many of
them were eating just this for breakfast it couldn't get simpler it's just oatmeal
boiled in a little bit of water maybe with milk and put that butter on top and if you
really need to you can add some brown sugar but just like this let's see what it's like.
It is really really good oatmeal and makes a great breakfast whether it's today or 300 years ago.