Ask Felicity Cloake: readers grill our resident culinary perfectionist

Should beans really be in a British cooked breakfast? Can you cook a meal for 30p? And what does she always keep handy for a quick dinner?

What is the logic behind the foods deemed suitable for the British breakfast? Traditionally, we eat bacon but not ham, kidneys but not liver, haddock but not cod, kedgeree but not curry. I know there are individual and regional variations, but the taboos still seem eccentric.
Matthew, Aberystwyth

There is no logic, because it isn’t actually a very old tradition – look back at Victorian or Edwardian breakfast menus, and everything was fair game, from pasta to pickled herrings, mutton chops and onion soup. I suspect the modern “rules” about what is and isn’t breakfast food arise from the fact that these days a cooked breakfast is often consumed outside the home, in busy cafes with cramped kitchens, which restrict them to a certain, much smaller selection of dishes – favouring fairly cheap, easy to prepare foods with a long shelf life and wide appeal, such as bacon and eggs, rather than turbot au gratin or devilled pheasant.

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