Talk:Irish breakfast

message: The consensus on VfD and talk pages seems to be to keep this article. In spite of the arguing over how different or similar an English breakfast is, most subscribe to the idea that a seperate article is needed. For one thing, an article on Irish breakfast, and one on English breakfast, are likely to come to different conclusions on the true contents. (Regardless of silly pointless arguments on Tomatoes, Kidneys, Puddings - something even the Irish can argue about amongst themselves!). Both articles are VERY unlikely to come to the same consensus. By all means anyone Scottish, Welsh or otherwise should add their own pages. They are different places with different customs and habits. The general similarity of the fried breakfast is not of importance. This is also about more than names.
Thanks to the fuss kicked up, the article is coming along nicely. Thanks to Ludraman for starting the history thing, and I think hotel practices in Ireland and elsewhere can also be expanded. Thanks whoever added the ketchup point about breakfast rolls.
Someone could perhaps add some stuff about the salt content of Irish breakfast items (even higher than in Britain) and the health consequences. Also I heard somewhere that the fried breakfast is one meal where they scientists have detected noticable hardening of the arteries after just one sitting! (Apparently you recover unless you follow it up regularly with another the next day or day after).
Zoney 12:54, 23 Mar 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Consensus and article development

message: I have just finished reading Mark Kurlansky's great book "Cod", which adds further weight to my assertion that what is called an Irish breakfast is the same as an English breakfast. Thus:
::Until recently, cod roe was the central feature of an Irish breakfast. Most Irish today do not eat cod roe for breakfast because, though they do not seem to realise it, what is called an Irish breakfast is increasingly similar to English breakfast. In the old Irish breakfast, the roe was sliced in half and fried in bacon fat or simply boiled. Jooler
:::Similar certainly - but that's all. There are indeed differences with what English/Irish expect to be usually served, or available. You could always add the cod/roe bit to the history section. Certainly I've never heard of it or seen it served. I don't know about the "until recently" comment - I suspect the word is stretching things a bit! Zoney 13:16, 14 Apr 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: You make a point, certainly, Jooler. How about a section on traditional varients of the Irish breakfast, or something along those lines? LUDRAMAN | T 20:54, 14 Apr 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Cod

message: At the suggestion of Ludraman, I looked over this article. He was looking for a disinterested, not to say absymally ignorant, observer, and he found one. I didn't even know there existed such a thing as an Irish breakfast (however you capitalize it). So, my observations have nothing to do with facts, but with presentation and structure and the effect on the new to Irish breakfast reader.
The article appears a bit muddled, especially in the intro section. Perhaps this is due to the back and forth editing documented above? Anyway, it's confusing. 
Newspaper pyramid style would be a good way to avoid this effect on the general reader, poor fellow. I suggest that the 2nd para in Hotels (at least as it currently stands) is a good intro para candidate. Thence might follow variations (historical, geographic, purveyor variations, and fast food commercial takeoffs), comparisons with other similar sorts (the English, the Scottish, the Welsh(??)), and then perhaps some economic history, relative costs of ingredients and such. 
I found this last (the economic history stuff) most interesting, but I wonder if it belongs here. Perhaps in an article on breakfast history in the British Isles, since there seems to be some commonality?  Or in one on culinary or nuitritional history of Ireland, together more on the effect of the potato, and perhaps an aside noting Dean Swift's satire on economic policy re Ireland. Maybe Dr Johnson's famous jibe at the Scots re oats might find a place. 
Do we know anything about Irish diet prior to say 1000? Or prior to the Vikings? I find I'm now interested to hear.
Finally, a nit or two. It's my understanding that the Masai don't do as here suggested. But perhaps I'm out to sea on that one as well. And, could Kurliansky be right for the ordinary Irishman? Surely cod roe presented shipping and preservation problems which would make it affordable only by the economically fortunate?
Best of luck. I'm now interested and will probably check in in a bit to see if anything I've had to say was found helpful. 
ww 20:34, 16 Apr 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Hello ww, imagine seeing you here! I just stumbled across this little dispute and thought I should throw my .02 in too. I'm from Australia, a country with a large number of both English and Irish migrants. Here, "English breakfast" usually means a type of tea (which, as it happens, I am sipping on right now). As a meal, it is mainly found on the menu of a "bed and breakfast" which is striving to be Englishy; you do not commonly see it on the menu of a city café. It is generally toast, bacon, eggs and tomato, with tea or coffee, very occasionally with kippers as an option. Aficionados will want HP sauce on it. "Irish breakfast" is also a type of tea, but it is also a common menu item in cafés serving "all day breakfast", and is especially popular rather late on a Saturday morning... It is a much bigger meal. At a minimum it has sausages as well as bacon, and usually also black pudding, mushrooms and perhaps some sort of fried potato. As you can't get soda bread here, instead you get very thick buttered toast. (The current fashion is to make the toast too thick to fit in one's mouth.) Essentially an English breakfast is a moderately substantial but more genteel meal, while an Irish breakfast is suitable if ravenous or hungover. Incidentally, if you subtract the black pudding and replace the potato with baked beans, the café will probably call it an "Aussie breakfast" although actually few Australians would have such a breakfast at home. Securiger 16:54, 5 Jul 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: some comments by a bystander

message: :Because of the high contents of meat, and subsequently grease, fat and cholesterol, the Irish Breakfast is widely considered unfit for very regular consumption.
The way this was phrased struck me as rather POV (e.g. "grease" as a reference to dietary fat, "unfit", etc.). But more importantly, it uses "widely considered" to make claims which are rather difficult to support. The idea that dietary cholesterol is a significant cause of hypercholesterolemia has very little medical support these days. The simplistic "fat = bad" formula is rapidly losing support, with burgeoning evidence that two decades of low fat diets are a major cause of obesity, especially childhood obesity (see e.g. , ). And who exactly (except perhaps for vegans or PETA) claims that meat is per se unhealthy? While the overall size of this meal is fairly large and probably suited only for a quite active person or iregular consumption, the proportion of meat in this meal is not greatly different from that recommended in the food pyramid. Securiger 08:57, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: I had heard that the traditional fry is one of the few meals after which there's noticeable hardening of the arteries. Apparently one recovers unless it's followed up by another the same day, or possibly the next. I don't remember where I read of this experiment result though. It may have been Ripley's believe it or not, AKA BBC News Sci-Tech. zoney ▓   ▒ talk 10:15, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Health effects 

message: This item was removed by an anon IP. Where exactly in Ireland have people not heard of hash browns? They are quite common in Limerick, especially in breakfast rolls. zoney ♣ talk 15:49, 2 Oct 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Hash browns 

message: That's not an Irish breakfast; where's the soda bread? Jooler 00:27, 21 Mar 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Sadly not available in the shop where I bought the other ingredients. Tragic. And I was too hungry to bother looking elsewhere. JOHN COLLISON (An Liúdramán) 21:45, 21 Mar 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: LOL. Someone needs to teach you how to fry eggs properly. 22:17, 21 Mar 2005 (UTC)

text: You rarely, if ever get soda bread in an Irish breakfast. It's more likely to be white toast. Soda bread is usually served with or before lunch or dinner in a restaurant. --Cchunder 18:11, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: In my experience, you almost invariably get soda bread with breakfast in Belfast. -- Dominus 18:24, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Belfast is different. In Belfast you get an ulster fry which contains a soda farl and / or potato cakes. Soda bread as it refers to the Republic is a dense brown slab of "bread" that smells vaguely unpleasant. Some places might serve it but they're a small minority. Almost everywhere serves regular toast. I enjoyed a great ulster fry in a Belfast cafe called Hardy's - it wasn't haute cuisine but it was memorably stodgy. --Cchunder 18:45, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: You're all making my point, an Irish breakfast is only an Irish breakfast if that's what the menu says. It is the same thing as an English breakfast. Jooler 22:28, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Picture

message: The current edit states "The term Irish breakfast is the only term used in Ireland for fried breakfasts", but this is an outright lie, I've heard all manner of slang used to describe a fried breakfast, with "fry" or "fry-up" being more common than an "Irish breakfast". Many of the people I know from the north of Ireland refer to such a breakfast with names like "burn-up" and other colourful colloquialisms. --Nosmo 10:34, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: The only term?

message: The History section was duplicated, and one was poorly formated, so I removed that one. Chegitz guevara 17:48, 2 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Removed Duplicate History Section

message: I made a merge of the Irish breakfast and the Full English breakfast pages at Full breakfast. Is it okay to blank the Full English breakfast and Irish breakfast pages and redirect them (and Scottish breakfast and Welsh breakfast) there? I included references to Ulster fry in the merged article but as discussed that page will not be merged. --sony-youthtalk 21:20, 10 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Merge 

message: I've re-instated the article proper, as the current content is not particularly well laid out, and Full breakfast is not particularly useful with the attempts to explain all types of breakfast.
zoney  ♣ talk 02:15, 11 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Re-instating article.