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
|