The traditional, full English breakfast is no trivial matter. It is an incredibly filling 4- to 5-course meal. On a normal day, given a typical person, each of the courses could be a breakfast by itself. Combined, the amount of food is enough to choke a mule! It is hard to imagine that in the Victorian times this would be a meal for one.

Compared to France or Italy where a breakfast consists of a piece of pasty and some type of coffee (black, with milk or cappuccino), English breakfast is incredibly huge. The closest that comes to it is American breakfast. English breakfast consists of a starter (fruit juice, prunes, grapefruit), cereal, a main course, toast and marmalade and, of course, tea.

It would be silly to imply that everybody in the U.K. eats like this every morning. This is based on readings about 19th century traditions, which we found interesting.

	The first course is a glass of orange juice or half a grapefruit cut into segments, sprinkled with sugar and eaten with a spoon. Tea and coffee with milk are served.
	The second course is porridge with milk ...
	... or cornflakes (for those who hate oatmeal).
	The third course consists of eggs fried sunny side up, served with fried bacon, pork sausage and mushrooms, grilled tomatoes, black pudding (Blutwurst), baked beans etc.
	The fourth course is a choice between fish or meat: kipper (salted, pickled and smoked herring), deviled kidneys (spicy lamb kidneys cooked in a mixture of Worcestershire sauce, mushroom, ketchup, English mustard powder, butter, cayenne pepper, salt, and black pepper) or kedgeree (cooked fish in curried rice).
	For the fifth and final course, toast, marmalade and jam are served, just in case you are not bursting yet.