Staffordshire oatcakes

Not to be confused with the Scottish biscuits, these floppy oat flour flatbreads are more akin to French crepes. Quick and easy to produce over the fire, they once provided sustenance for the region’s miners. They remain popular today, although most of the hole-in-the-wall spots from which they were traditionally sold have gone the same way as the mines. Nevertheless, they’re delicious wrapped around bacon, sausage and eggs for a fry-up on the go.

Laverbread

Laver, a type of seaweed, has been eaten by coastal communities for centuries, especially in southwest Wales and the West Country. It’s gathered from rocky shores, rinsed and boiled for hours until the reddish fronds are reduced to an olive-green paste that can be mixed with oatmeal, formed into cakes and fried in bacon fat. Laver’s high iodine content gives it a flavour somewhat reminiscent of oysters and other seafood, lending it the nickname ‘Welsh caviar’.

Kippers

Once a firm favourite at breakfast, kippers are more often to be found on hotel menus than being cooked at home these days, probably because of the strong smell. Though kippering is, in fact, the process by which a fish is split open, salted and then smoked, it’s generally used in reference to herring, and is most famously seen in the form of Arbroath smokies and Manx and Craster kippers, all of which are cured in slightly different ways. Kippers are particularly nice with a poached egg or in that Anglo-indian breakfast favourite, kedgeree.

Soda bread

As the name suggests, this is bread raised by bicarbonate of soda rather than yeast, a process that gives it a soft, cakey texture, perfect for soaking up bacon fat or egg yolk. It’s particularly popular in Ireland, where it tends to be made with buttermilk left over from making butter; the lactic acid reacts with the bicarb to produce gas that raises the dough when heated. It was traditionally baked in the embers of the fire and scored with a cross — to assist with the cooking and to let the devil out, of course.