How universal is bacon and eggs?

“He shoveled the bacon out on a plate and broke the eggs in the hot grease and they jumped and fluttered their edges to brown lace and made clucking sounds.” John Steinbeck

I can't quite remember now why I thought to write about bacon and eggs - we certainly hardly ever eat them here - well the classic version as shown above - basically because David doesn't like fried eggs, and I'm also not very good at getting crispy bacon. I blame it on the Australian bacon - there seems something wrong with it to me - but it's more likely to be because I don't cook it properly. But really I don't think it's the same as English bacon, although why that should be I have no idea. After all a pig is a pig is a pig is it not? - so it must be something to do with the way they smoke it or cure it or whatever they do to it. Besides it's not healthy is it?

Well actually there seems to be a bit of dispute about that - there is a body of opinion that says that a protein rich breakfast is very good for you. Lots of dopamine that sends you off raring to go and with a relatively full stomach which means you won't binge on lunch.

What I was actually going to write about was how the combination of bacon and eggs is found throughout the world - because it's basic isn't it? People have raised chickens for food and eggs since time immemorial and pigs - along with goats are surely the easiest animals to raise because they will eat anything. Yes Islam and Judaism prohibit pork - with good reason in times gone by. Pigs were carriers of tapeworms and eating infected pork meant you ended up with a tapeworm. And 'pure' hindus and buddhists are vegetarian I guess but otherwise pork is a widely eaten meat.

Bacon is a method of preserving your pork through the year when you didn't have refrigeration. So there you go - bacon and eggs - with a bit of bread - and sometimes cheese too.

When I was a child my mother tried (and succeeded) to make me eat bacon and eggs every morning - she was a firm believer in the value of a hot breakfast. Actually I don't remember the bacon so much - but definitely the eggs - and fried bread - now that can't be good for you surely? But I'm not a morning person and I don't really like chewing things in the morning, so there was a lot of arguing about it. I need to have had the shower first - not that we had a shower in our house - which is why I can eat it in posh hotels - and with pleasure too.

It was also a big component of the transport café menu. At the end of the vast estate which was my university was the M6 and a transport café to which the students often went for a big fry up. it was cheap, cheerful and filling and would have looked something like this, though perhaps not so nicely arranged, and without the healthy orange juice.

Egg and bacon still features on the modern day all day breakfast menu but these days the egg is likely to be poached, the bacon is likely to be pancetta, the sausages chorizo and the tomatoes vine-ripened. Or it would just be served on some kind of sour dough with some smashed avocado somewhere. Still bacon and eggs though.

Anyway - bacon and eggs around the world. I thought of carbonara in Italy, quiche in France and Huevos Rancheros from Mexico and maybe stir fries in Asia with egg and maybe some kind of Asian sausage instead of bacon. But there my brain stopped, so I went to Google - and couldn't really find anything on this topic at all. Lots and lots of recipes for doing things with bacon and eggs. from quiche to Heston Blumenthal's weird scrambled egg and bacon ice cream. But nothing that told me how one nation or another used the combination of bacon and eggs. I did find, however, that I was a bit wrong about the Huevos Rancheros - no bacon - although the odd chorizo snuck in here and there. And I couldn't really find whether those stir fries that I sort of knew about were really Asian or imported from elsewhere. So if I've missed something obvious let me know.

So I'm sorry - not much to say on this subject. Except that the English are the ones who seem to have perfected it in its simplest form, and that there is probably a lot to say on any of the individual dishes that are based on bacon and egg. Carbonara for example. Another time.