Full English breakfast should contain pineapple instead of tomatoes and mushrooms, say connoisseurs
26 January 2024, 14:40
A group of breakfast aficionados has suggested tomatoes and mushrooms should be removed from the full English and replaced with pineapple.
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The English Breakfast Society, which is dedicated to the heritage and culture of the English breakfast, says in centuries past the fruit was eaten alongside bacon, sausages and eggs as part of the dish.
They want it to start making a return in the form of grilled pineapple on the breakfast plate.
Guise Bule de Missenden, the society’s founder and chair, told the Daily Telegraph: “Interestingly, in the late 16th and early 17th centuries, the pineapple was considered to be a high-status breakfast item in Great Britain.
“Pineapples used to be seen as exotic, expensive, difficult to obtain and were a highly prized breakfast ingredient for wealthy English families, which is why you can find lots of old English pineapple breakfast recipes.
“King Charles II himself loved them, so if you wanted to add a touch of the exotic to your plate and eat like a 17th-century lord, there is no reason not to give it a try,” he added. “A slice of grilled pineapple can add variety to the English breakfast plate. Simply swap the mushrooms or tomato for a grilled pineapple slice in someone’s English breakfast one day to give them a surprising and unexpected delight.”
“Nobody really likes the tomatoes,” he added.
In November he posted the group’s Facebook page: "I may or may not have told a major global fruit brand, and a well known PR agency, that it's cool if we have pineapple on our breakfast instead of tomato, on the basis that it was historically an elite English breakfast ingredient, a firm favourite of King Charles the 2nd.”
Last year, the group said that hash browns had no place on a full English.
He told the Times last year: “Somebody had to put their foot down. Otherwise we’ll find kebab meat in our English breakfast before long.
“The hash brown – the reconstituted, tater-based fast-food – was popularised by McDonald’s but somehow we now find it in our English breakfast.”
