Making Breakfast The Victorian Way. & (OH, ---YUUUUUMMMMMM!!!) Bangers And Mashed..

Mashed potatoes are my favorite food. Here's how I make mine... I boil red potatoes till they're done and mash them by hand with a hand masher, leaving some lumps, which is how you can tell they're home-made. I add 2% milk and real butter. I sometimes add a little sour cream. I add season salt and black pepper. I usually serve them with beef or chicken gravy, and sometimes with a "lake" of melted butter in the middle of them when they're put in the serving bowl. For company, I sprinkle the top of the bowl of mashed potatoes with dried parsley flakes and bacon crumbles. 

Bangers are the quintessential British breakfast sausage, forever immortalized by being half of the classic 'Bangers & Mash" and they have become famous internationally as 'bangers'. Bangers are not just one kind of sausage, the term bangers can refer to any British sausage and you will a variety of British sausages in the English breakfast depending on what part of the country you are in.

Why Are They Called Bangers ?

British sausages being called bangers seems to be a historical legacy, a colloquial term left over from war time when sausages sometimes exploded in the pan when you cooked them. We started calling sausages bangers sometime during the first World War, it was a slang name for a sausage at the time.

British sausages are sometimes called bangers because back then, sausages had a habit of bursting open while cooking. This was partly due to the shrinkage of the tight skin (this is still quite a common occurrence depending on the sausage if you do not prick them before cooking) and partly because of the cheap sausage fillers that they were using at the time.

During both world wars there was less meat available, they filled their sausages more fat and cheap fillers that expanded rapidly under heat, causing the sausages to burst open violently in the pan. This is the reason why people called them bangers, it was a slang term that they used to refer to sausages, because bang is exactly what they would when you cooked them.

The History Of Bangers

Historically the term 'bangers' was in use as far back as 1919, but British sausages started to be more widely called bangers during World War Two, another time in British history when meat rations were scarce and sausages had to be made with cheaper fillers added to the sausage mix, making them more likely to explode when cooked, unless of course you pricked their skin beforehand. Even now, if you use enough fat in your sausage filler, your sausages may very well go bang when you cook them.

Strangely, nobody in Britain really calls them bangers unless they are being served with mash as part of the very popular bangers & mash dish and these days the term bangers appears to be confined to that dish, you simply would not ask for three bangers on your breakfast or a banger sandwich and British people do not really call them bangers. Nonetheless, the term bangers remains incredibly popular as a way to refer to a British sausage by foreigners.

If you want to learn how to make your own bangers, head on over to our recipes section and check out our bangers sausage recipe and try and make your own homemade version of British bangers.

If you are interested in history, heritage and recipes of the traditional English breakfast, check out our official English Breakfast Handbook, lovingly produced by the English Breakfast Society.

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The Victorian Breakfast...

Above, I think I recognize ham, maybe what might be prunes, tomato slices, two fried eggs, mushrooms, toast, beans and bangers.

Above, how to make what sounds delicious to me, ---cooked rice with minced cooked fish, fried in butter with scrambled eggs, salt, pepper and a little cream, garnished with boiled eggs and prawns (cooked shrimp).