#3 The Bakers at Breakfast

It’s 8 o’clock in the morning. Now the Baker family is about to eat breakfast, but they all want different things. Mr. Baker would like tea and two boiled eggs. Mrs. Baker would like coffee. Both Mr. and Mrs. Baker would like toasts, butter and marmalade. Their son Simon isn’t very hungry, so he only wants an egg and a glass of orange juice. Their daughter Sarah would like cereals with milk and sugar: cornflakes or rice flakes.

#4 Lunch at a Restaurant

At 1 p.m. Mr. and Mrs. Baker go out for lunch, they take Clara along. She is watching and leaning what people say at lunch, what are the names of dishes.

Mr. Baker: Well, I think I’ll start with soup. I’m feeling rather cold. What would you like, dear?

Mrs. Baker: Oh, I think I’ll have fruit juice and afterwards, I’ll have roast lamb or roast beef. Would you like beef too, or how about the fish?

Mr. Baker: No, I Think I’ll have pork chops today. I had fish last time we were here.

Mrs. Baker: To finish with, I’ll have some cake. No, I’ll have apple pie and coffee.

Mr. Baker: Good, let’s find the waiter and order – I’m hungry now. By the way, where did their children have lunch?

Mrs. Baker: Simon had a snack in a pub with friends, Sarah had a bite to eat at school.

#5 Mrs. Baker’s Tea-Party

On the first Thursday in every month Mrs. Baker invites her friends to have tea with her. At four o’clock Mrs. Baker asks Clara to bring in the tea. Clara knows that in England making tea is a very serious matter. Mrs. Baker teaches her how it is done. Fresh water is boiled in a kettle and when the water is hot, a little is put in the teapot to warm it. The pot is then dried and the tea put in – one spoonful for each person and “one for the pot”. When the water is quite boiling, it is poured on to the tea and the tea must be left four or five minutes before it is at its best.

Tea must be poured in cups as carefully, as it is made. Before you pour tea you should ask each person which he or she prefers: with milk or without, with sugar or without it.

Mrs. Baker is a good cook, she is rather proud of her cooking, so she always serves home-made cakes at her tea-parties.

About half past four the guests begin to leave. By five o’clock everyone has gone and Mrs. Baker can begin to get the evening meal ready for the family.

#6 Dinner or Supper?

Clara always wondered how to call the evening meal in an English family: supper or dinner. At about 5 p.m. Mrs. Baker says: “I’ve got to make supper for the kids coming home from school.” Mr. Baker returns from the office and says: “I’m tired and hungry and I want some supper.” The members of the family get together and have their supper.

But what’s dinner then? Mr. Baker explains to Clara: “Dinner is the main meal of the day. In Britain many working-class people use the word “dinner” to refer to the meal that they have at midday. Many middle-class people use the word “dinner” to refer to the meal they eat in the evening.” Clara heard Mrs. Baker say: “Tell Peter his dinner’s in the oven.” Or: “They had a quiet dinner together.”

Once Mrs. Baker tells Clara that they have invited some friends to dinner. The guests arrive at about half past seven and are shown into the sitting-room where Mr. Baker pours drinks for them. Sherry is the most popular wine in England: men usually prefer dry sherry, but women like sweet sherry. At eight o’clock Mr. Baker says that dinner is ready, and all move into the dinning-room.

Mrs. Baker does all the cooking in her house. The food is excellent. There are usually four courses: soup (or, in the summer, fruit juice), fish, meat (beef, mutton, or more often, chicken or duck) and a sweet. The sweet may be pudding, or tart, or perhaps ice-cream. Cheese and biscuits and coffee are served after the sweet, and there are different kinds of fruit also on the table. Wine (either red or white) is drunk with the meat and brandy with the coffee.

At about eleven the guests leave. Mr. and Mrs. Baker see them off at the garden gate. The guests thank their host and hostess for a pleasant evening, and drive off.

Clara realized that when the Bakers have a usual light meal in the evening, it is supper. When they have something special, when there’s wine or brandy, when guests come to eat with the Bakers, it’s dinner then.

Clara is a very inquisitive girl. One quiet evening she looks through books and dictionaries, that Mr. Baker allowed her to use, and that is what she finds out about the history of the English “meal words”

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#7 Stories of Names of the Meals.

Mysterious Lunch

Lunch is full of mystery, indeed. Some people think it comes from an old Spanish word lonje, a piece of ham. Many others suppose that it comes from a dialect form of the word lump, a piece of bread, which was distorted into lunch. Such things happened in the English language: we have lunch from hump, bunch from bump. Why not lunch from lump? Anyway, nobody is sure whether the word lunch comes from ham or bread (or may be both, in a ham sandwich?). At least, one thing is clear: lunch meant a piece of something to eat.

It is not surprising that people often have a light lunch, rather a bite of sandwich or a snack of bread and cheese with a glass of beer in a pub. Though it may be something more substantial at a restaurant or a canteen.

Breakfast and Dinner Are the Same? Well, I Never!

Breakfast and dinner mean nearly the same: to stop not eating, to stop being hungry. Breakfast is an Anglo-Saxon word, and it is made up of two parts: break and fast. Fast in its old meaning in the word breakfast meant “to be firm in your determination not to eat”. The early Christians thought you should not eat in the morning before church services, you should “fast”. After the service you were allowed to break your fast, so you could take “breakfast”.

The word dinner comes into English from Latin through French. In Middle English it had the spelling: dinere, which is a changed from of Old French disner from Latin disjejunare. The Latin word has two parts: dis-, away, and jejunus, hungry; so it means “away from being hungry”, to break one’s fast.

Snack and Bite Are a Pair? No Wonder

Snack and bite are a pair because they mean the same. Snack comes from Middle Dutch snacken, which means to snap or to bite, as you say it of a dog. Bite was bitan in Old English and meant “to use one’s teeth to cut a piece of smth”, “to snap”. Actually both words meant the same. Later they developed the meaning: “to bite something to eat”. Nowadays they both mean “a light, quick meal”.

A Drink for Supper!

The word supper was borrowed from the French. There is a supposition that supper comes from sup, which originates from an Indo-European base relating to drinking. Supper is the name of a meal taken at the end of the day. In old times when people had little heat in their houses they used to have a hot drink before going to bed. That was supper, so first supper meant “to drink” at bed-time, later it began to refer to the last meal of the day.

Breakfast at 5 A.M.? You Are Kidding!

It is really true that understanding British meals is one of the great mysteries for the foreign visitor. Over the centuries, the British not only named and re-named their meals, but they also moved them about the day in a strange way.

Long time ago Englishmen took their breakfast at 5 o’clock in the morning. Rather early, isn’t it? But then they had to start work early. Now breakfast is a meal that is taken at any time before 11.30. In Norman times, in the 12^th century, dinner was a meal taken at 9 a.m. By the 15^th century it had moved to 11 a.m. Today it has changed the time and the name as well. It can be eaten at any time between noon and 2.30 in the afternoon and is called lunch by a large proportion of the population of Britain.

Supper was at 4 o’clock in the 14^th century, now it is teatime. And it is here that we have a complete confusion. Some English working families have tea or high tea at about 6 in the evening, while the rest of their countrymen have dinner, which is often called supper, at about 7.30 p.m.

#8 How Food Names Came to the English Table