Cereal was invented at a health spa
Breakfast CEREAL began in the United States in the 1800s as health food. In 1863 a doctor called James Caleb Jackson baked a whole-grain dough into hard chunks that had to be soaked overnight, and called it Granula. At a health spa in Battle Creek, Michigan, the brothers John Harvey Kellogg and Will Kellogg were experimenting with boiled wheat in 1894 when they left a batch standing. When they rolled it out it broke into flakes, and they toasted them. Corn flakes followed, and Will later founded the cereal company.
The Kelloggs also made a baked oat mixture and called it Granula too, until Jackson complained; they changed the name to GRANOLA.
Toast, bagels and croissants
The pop-up toaster was patented in 1921 by Charles Strite, a mechanic in Minnesota who was fed up with burnt TOAST in the factory canteen. His machine timed the toasting and pushed the slices up when they were done. Before that, bread was held to a fire on a long fork.
The BAGEL, boiled before it is baked, is mentioned in rules written for the Jewish community of Kraków in Poland in 1610. The CROISSANT took a long road to France. A crescent-shaped bread roll called the kipferl was baked in Austria for centuries, and a Viennese baker who opened a shop in Paris in the 1830s helped make it popular. The flaky, buttery French croissant came later, and the story that it was invented to celebrate a victory over an army besieging Vienna in 1683 is almost certainly made up.
Pancake races and porridge champions
On Shrove Tuesday, the day before Lent begins, British households make PANCAKE after pancake to use up eggs, milk and fat before the fast. In the town of Olney in Buckinghamshire, women have run a pancake race through the streets for centuries, tossing a pancake in a frying pan as they go; the story is that a woman heard the church bell while cooking and ran out still holding her pan. Our Mardi Gras page covers the same day's carnival side.
PORRIDGE is taken very seriously in Scotland. The village of Carrbridge in the Highlands has held the World Porridge Making Championship since 1994, and the prize is a Golden Spurtle, a spurtle being the wooden stick used for stirring. Americans call the same thing OATMEAL.
Bringing home the bacon
In the Essex town of Great Dunmow, a very old custom offers a flitch, or side, of BACON to any married couple who can convince a jury that they have not quarrelled, or wished they were unmarried, for a year and a day. The Dunmow Flitch Trials are still held every four years, and some say they are behind the phrase bring home the bacon.
A cooked breakfast of EGGS, SAUSAGE, bacon and a HASHBROWN is a British and Irish institution, while the French start the day with a croissant or bread and JAM. A CRUMPET gets its holes from bubbles of gas rising through the batter as it cooks on a griddle, so butter sinks right into it. A WAFFLE iron has been patented, redesigned and fought over since the 1800s.