Whatever Happened to the Breakfast Set?

There was a time when breakfast apparently required considerably more equipment.

Not just a mug and a cereal bowl, but breakfast cups and saucers, egg cups, toast racks, butter dishes, preserve pots, muffin dishes, small plates, coffee pots and sometimes an entire service made specifically for the first meal of the day.

Today, most of us would consider finding a clean mug before 8am a respectable achievement.

So what happened to the breakfast set?

Breakfast Used to Have Its Own Tableware

The idea of a dedicated breakfast service goes back a long way.

By the late eighteenth century, potteries were already producing pieces specifically intended for breakfast. A service might include large cups and saucers, small plates, egg cups and stands, butter dishes, muffin dishes and pots for honey or preserves.

As ceramic manufacture expanded during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, breakfast ware became available to a much wider market.

Manufacturers could offer complete ranges containing pieces for almost every conceivable part of the meal, while individual breakfast sets were sometimes designed for one person, complete with their own small teapot or coffee pot.

The Breakfast Cup

One of the survivors we still encounter regularly is the breakfast cup.

Usually larger than a conventional tea cup, but still intended to sit on a saucer, it occupied the territory that the everyday mug would eventually take over.

Many British potteries made them. Denby, Poole Pottery, Wedgwood, Royal Doulton and numerous others produced breakfast cups within their tableware ranges.

They make perfect sense when you think about it. If the first cup of tea or coffee of the day needs to be substantial, why keep getting up for refills?

Toast Apparently Needed Furniture

Then there is the toast rack.

The traditional design keeps individual slices upright and separated, allowing steam to escape rather than leaving the toast sitting in a damp pile.

The slight flaw, of course, is that it also allows the toast to become cold with remarkable efficiency.

Nevertheless, toast racks became established breakfast-table pieces and survived well into the twentieth century. Ceramic versions appeared alongside metal ones, often made to coordinate with a wider service.

Today they are much less common at breakfast, although they remain one of those pieces people instantly recognise even if they have never actually owned one.

Egg Cups, Muffin Dishes and All the Other Bits

Egg cups have survived rather better.

They remain useful because the basic problem they solve has not changed very much. A boiled egg is still inconveniently shaped if you attempt to stand it on a plate.

Other pieces were less fortunate.

Muffin dishes, covered butter dishes, preserve pots and elaborate egg stands gradually became less necessary as breakfast itself became quicker and less formal.

Some of these pieces now cause a little head scratching when they arrive at MrPottery. Without the lid, stand or accompanying pieces, it is not always immediately obvious what a strangely shaped dish was originally intended to do.

Then Breakfast Changed

The disappearance of the breakfast set probably has less to do with tableware fashion than with the way we live.

Breakfast became quicker.

More people worked away from home, commuting increased, convenience foods arrived, electric kettles and toasters made preparation easier, and the family was less likely to gather around a carefully laid breakfast table every morning.

The tableware followed.

The large breakfast cup and saucer increasingly gave way to the mug. Cereal bowls remained because they were still useful. Egg cups survived for anyone who still fancied a boiled egg. The toast rack, muffin dish and dedicated preserve pot became optional rather than essential.

And eventually a lot of breakfast became something eaten while standing in the kitchen.

The Mug Won

If there is one piece that probably did most to simplify the breakfast table, it is the mug.

It does not need a saucer. It holds a decent quantity of tea or coffee. It is easy to carry around while finding shoes, making packed lunches or trying to persuade somebody else to get out of bed.

Once mugs became an everyday staple, the need for separate tea cups, coffee cups and breakfast cups became much less obvious.

That does not mean the older pieces stopped being useful. Plenty of people still prefer drinking from a cup and saucer, and a large breakfast cup has a pleasing generosity about it.

But the mug certainly won the battle for convenience.

What Survived?

Quite a lot, actually.

Bowls, mugs, small plates and egg cups are still firmly part of modern breakfast. Cafetières and coffee pots remain popular. Butter dishes and preserve pots turn up in many kitchens, even if they no longer form part of a matching service.

And some of the supposedly obsolete pieces are enjoying a second life.

A muffin dish can become a useful covered serving dish. Preserve pots work perfectly well for condiments. Large breakfast cups are just as good for an indulgent coffee today as they were decades ago.

The purpose may change, but good tableware has a habit of finding another job.

A Little More Ceremony Before 9am

There is something rather appealing about the old breakfast set.

Not because we necessarily want to return to laying out twelve different pieces of china before we are properly awake, but because it reflects a time when even an ordinary meal could have its own small rituals.

A proper cup and saucer. Toast standing neatly in its rack. Butter in a covered dish. Marmalade in a pot rather than straight from the jar.

Perhaps we have gained something by making breakfast quicker.

But we may have lost just a little ceremony along the way.