On any morning, how many households in the UK are, in fact, cooking a fry-up breakfast (tomatoes, eggs, sausage, bacon, potatoes, mushrooms, beans, blood pudding, bread, etc.)? Over 50 percent?
Is it one of those “despite the stereotype it is not actually that common” things?
How is it a stereotype? It’s literally just their version of a full breakfast. Or, more accurately, the American full breakfast is a regional variation of a British fry-up.
So I’d guess that households in the UK do full breakfasts about as often as households in America. Not very. It’s a lot of work, a lot of ingredients, and a whole lot of calories.
I’d put well under 1%. The fry-up was to give miners and manual workers the calories they needed to get through until a lunch break.
With most people in the UK now in physically less demanding jobs, and with time being precious, it’s going to be toast and Marmite or Weeties for breakfast in most households.
Fry-ups are of course available in Ye Olde Worlde High Street cafes where tourists order then regret their choice.
25 years ago, we spent two weeks in Ireland, staying exclusively in bed and breakfasts. Almost without fail, the lovely Irish B&Bs served an “Irish breakfast,” which is very similar to the English fry-up – eggs, sausages, bacon, either a black or white pudding, a fried half tomato, often with fried potatoes of some sort, and toast.
It was, as you note, traditionally the calorie-heavy breakfast that farmers and laborers would eat, and the B&Bs served them because it was what the tourists expected to have, and we were told that the Irish did not often have that sort of breakfast themselves anymore.
They usually also had a jar with some Weetabix pucks in them, as well, but I don’t know if anyone ever ate them. 
I see, thanks. I’d been under the impression most Brits cooked it most of the time; goes to show how little I know.
Or in small hotels. It’s the reason I now unconsciously associate London with intense gastroenterological pain
Nah, not since maybe the 60s is my guess, for the reasons mentioned.
Speaking for ourselves, we might do the full works as a weekend brunch about once a month, if that. Even then it won’t be as elaborate as what you would get at a hotel/B&B.
When I stay at a chain hotel that offers full breakfast, this will typically be a self-serve buffet (or at least would have been, prior to this year - can’t speak for 2020) with tea/coffee, fruit juices, cereals, milk, fruit, yoghurt, pastries, and a range of cooked breakfast items where you can go back as many times as you like. I like to avail myself of as much of this as I can while still capable of a slow walk, then plan on not having lunch that day.
Not sure potatoes are part of a typical British fry up - maybe a few chips (fries). Blood pudding is part of the traditional set but few people have it outside of a restaurant; it’s not the sort of thing most people have in the house. And bread = toast.
Also you forgot the most important element of the fry up. A cup of tea!
I’ll have a fry-up maybe once a month, as a special Friday night treat maybe?
Potatoes in any format aren’t thought of as standard, Fried bread is though! and of course it is always “black” rather than “blood” pudding. Everyone knows what’s in it though and I personally love it.
I’d say very rarely.
It used to be more common in the past when many people had heavy manual labour jobs. They needed the energy to get through the day.
Nobody has time in the mornings!
Doesn’t it take a Brit like three hours to scramble some eggs?
I don’t get the reference, but taking this literally, not for me. Knob of butter in a saucepan, crack eggs directly in as required, break yolks and stir with wooden spoon, a little salt and pepper, splash of milk, heat until desired consistency (I like the eggs to still be a little bit liquid/underdone, anything more I would call ‘rubbery’ but others would say ‘properly cooked’). About 10 minutes start to finish.
A proper fry up would of course have fried eggs, no scrambling required.
The way I do scrambled eggs, it probably takes less time than it does to boil an egg, but it depends on where, on the liquid-to-solid spectrum, you want your scrambled egg to end up.
Apparently, something I learned from this board: Brits scramble their eggs “low and slow” while Yanks tend to scramble their eggs “High heat and fast” (respectively, obviously it doesn’t take three hours.)
Ah, perhaps similar to the recent thread in which some people seem to think scrambled eggs = omelette? The former is as described above, which ends up lumpy and slightly liquid (or not, according to preference) - the latter involves beating the eggs more thoroughly before cooking, and finishing up with something more like a pancake. But it’s perfectly possible to cook scrambled eggs fast, I’ve never heard of it done any other way,
There’s like a million and one ways to scramble them, but the way I do it most often (as an American), is high heat and keep the eggs moving to create curds/lumps/whatever you want to call them. Not the same as an omelette which generally and doesn’t get moved around a lot and remains flat in the end. And then there are a good number of ways to make an omelette, as well.
When I was a teenager I traveled to Australia & New Zealand with People to People. My Kiwi host mum made these huge full English breakfasts she tried pass of has an everyday thing (host bro said they were a holiday thing). Meanwhile Aussie host mum just sat there smiling while I put too much Vegemite on my toast.
At one time I used to have a fried egg every morning, but I stopped that many years ago. Just cereal, one piece of toast, and go to work. The ‘heart-attack-on-a-plate’ breakfast is something you can order in cafés, if you really want it, but I seldom eat one.
When we walked across England, the fry-up was a great start to the day, but we didn’t tend to eat it very often when we were doing touristy stuff in London.