Friday 8 June 2012

The Perfect Full English Breakfast


A few weeks ago Rate My Sausage asked readers to tell us which ingredients they would include in their perfect Full English breakfast (FEB).  The results are now in and fully analysed....But first of all let’s look at the various parts of the FEB.  There are several very separate components of the meal, but each is equally as important as the others.  We think you need to include at least one item from each of the following categories:


Meat:  e.g. bacon, sausages
Eggs: fried, scrambled, poached, or your own favourite way?
Dry goods:  savoury and salty, e.g. black pudding, chips, hash browns
Wet goods: tomatoes, mushrooms, baked beans?  To add moisture
Bread:  toasted?  Or simply buttered?
Drinks: to wash it all down – tea, coffee, orange juice, or something else?


So that’s six parts of your meal that you need to address, giving a minimum of six ingredients you’d think.  However, our poll received a total of 1,723 votes from 194 replies, and that equates to an average of 8.8 breakfast items per reader.  We’ve rounded that to the nearest integer, so our ideal FEB will include nine items.  Hearty indeed. 


So, taking this ideal number on board, we settled on: meat (2 options), eggs (1),  dry goods (2), wet goods (2), bread (1), drinks (1), as follows (please forgive some shonky photography, my excuse is that I was hungry and impatient):


Meat:


Bacon was the most popular item overall (chosen by 96.4% of voters), and therefore the most popular meat item.  Of course, sausages are also included, being the second most popular item overall (93.3%).


Eggs:


Some people want more than one type of egg on their plate, with a total of 220 votes for eggs from 194 voters.  In our version we’ve included just one, the overwhelming favourite – the fried egg, voted for by 79.4%.  Others were poached eggs (12.4%) and scrambled eggs (21.6%).


Dry goods:


Hash browns (55.2%) and black pudding (53.6%) were the two most popular items, therefore included in our meal.  Perhaps surprisingly, chips earned votes from just 3.1% of voters.


Wet goods:


A very hotly contested category, attracting a total of 401 votes (2.1 per voter).  It was a close run thing with mushrooms (82.0%) and baked beans (67.0%) just pipping tomatoes (60.3%) onto our plate.


Bread:


An easy victory for toast, which was voted for by 76.8% of the poll, compared to just 35.1% voting for bread and butter.


Drinks:


Tea, coffee or orange juice, do you reckon?  Well coffee was the rank outsider (35.1% - I wonder if it was the same people that voted for bread and butter?), with the winning drink just one vote ahead of the runner-up.  Get the kettle on and make yourself some tea (58.8%), and leave the orange juice (58.2%) in the fridge.


Add all this together and your perfect Rate My Sausage Full English Breakfast looks a little like this:




Complete results:
Votes
Share
Bacon
187
96.4
Sausage
181
93.3
Mushrooms
159
82.0
Fried Egg
154
79.4
Toast
149
76.8
Baked Beans
130
67.0
Tomato
117
60.3
Tea
114
58.8
Orange Juice
113
58.2
Hash Brown
107
55.2
Black Pudding
104
53.6
Bread & Butter
68
35.1
Coffee
68
35.1
Scrambled Egg
42
21.6
Poached Egg
24
12.4
Chips
6
3.1
Total Votes

1723

Number of Voters
194

Average items =
8.88



7 comments:

Sue Imgrund said...

Looks scrummy! I was a bit surprised that you categorised black pudding together with hash browns and chips, as I tend to think of it as a sort of sausage (maybe that's the German influence as it's Blutwurst here!).

serina said...

How many people are you feeding in that pic? Looks far too much for just one person!

Rate My Sausage said...

Hi Serina, you'll have to imagine the picture with just one sausage, which is what I ate at the time. I cooked four for review purposes and it does indeed look like a family feast!

Jenny Eatwell said...

I'm amazed that the fried slice didn't feature, instead of the toast/buttered bread question. It always wins the vote in our house!

Rate My Sausage said...

Welcome to RMS Jenny!

Fried bread is indeed delicious, but it's one of those things that I Just Can't Do Right (we all have them I believe?), so I didn't include it. Mea culpa!

Charlotte Julienne said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Anonymous said...

I just can't understand why people have baked beans with an FEB. They contaminate and overpower every other component. It's very poor taste.