The full English breakfasteers can’t hold a capon to James I

Last week, it was the storm in the Yorkshire Tea cup. This week, the Full English Breakfast blow-up. Is no morning comestible safe from the outrage mob? When Britain’s chief Brexit negotiator, David Frost, tucked into a “patriotic” plate of sausages, baked beans, bacon and eggs at the ambassador’s residence in Brussels on Monday morning, he could not have known that by teatime he would be the subject of radio phone-ins, social media pile-ons and a bitterly divisive debate between Europhile croissant-fanciers and Full English Breakfasteers.

At the height of last week’s #Teagate, an exasperated social media manager at Yorkshire Tea called for calm, replying to one tweeter with a soothing: “Sue, you’re shouting at tea.” On Monday, amid rows over whether or not the Sumerians invented sausages and counterclaims that hens had “invented” eggs (I’m not joking), some wag pointed out the collective insanity of shouting at beans ’n’ double soss.

The LBC radio host James O’brien, epicentre of the sausage storm, tweeted that if anyone were to mention boudin noir (blood pudding on this side of the negotiations), the world would probably explode. It’s a mercy Mr Frost wasn’t spotted buttering a perfidious pain au raisin.

Poor Mr Frost. The man only wanted to ginger himself up for a day’s hard wrangling over the economic and political future of the country. Perfectly natural to order the heartiest, meatiest, eggiest breakfast on offer. Who’d go into bat against Barnier on an espresso and single biscotto?

I’m lately back from Florence, where the B&B breakfast was enough (or rather, not enough) to make an Englishman weep: dry biscuits and drier ham.

Even my unfailingly chipper husband sagged.

Putting aside questions of patriotism or whether one is a traitor to one’s country for daring to breakfast on mini-viennoiserie, it is a truth acknowledged in breakfast buffets the world over that for sheer ballast the Full English beats the demitasse and the petit-dej.

Whether served with bursting bangers, white pudding or steamed haggis, a full English, Irish or Scottish sets you up like nothing else.

But where, I find myself worrying, were the mushrooms? The fried tomatoes? The wilting sprig of token parsley? Is Mr Frost getting his five-a-day? I had rather the same thought reading the story of the banquet given in honour of James I at Hoghton Tower in Lancashire in 1617.

Among the 130 dishes served, there is no mention of kale, kimchi or smashed avocado. The menu, a copy of which will be sold at auction today, does however go big on pullet, capon, mutton, duck, veal, venison, turkey, swan, goose, rabbit, snipe, pheasant, quail, partridge, curlew, deer, heron, gammon, tongue and hog’s cheek.

Reading the bill of fare, I was relieved to come across “artichoke pye”, “pear tart” and “peas, buttered”. Something for the vegetarians, if not the Lancastrian vegans.

This was the occasion on which James was said to have been so taken with the beef that he drew his sword and ennobled it: “Loin, we dub thee knight, henceforward be Sir Loin! Arise, Sir Loin.” And so, supposedly, the sirloin steak was born.

Hard to imagine one of today’s whole roast cauliflowers proving quite so inspiring.

read more at telegraph.co. uk/opinion