The Whole World Over

Southland Times, Issue 22508, 16 February 1935, Page 17

The Whole World Over

BREAKFAST WITH THE NATIONS. A bird’s eye view of the whole of Europe at the breakfast table would present a most interesting sight if we could see the world’s workers of all the various countries taking their first meal of the day, acquiring energy and courage to face life’s little problems, states the New Zealand Herald. The most significant fact which commands attention is that on every table will be found bread. The Latin races, the Teutons and the Slavs all eat bread in the morning; in fact, many of them eat nothing else before lunch. The whole of Central Europe is purely and simply a concourse of bread-eaters. France, Spain, Germany, Austria, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, Italy and Switzerland all eat rolls and butter, finding it the perfect energizing meal with which to commence the day. There are one or two slight variations in the roll and coffee breakfast. In Italy, for instance, they eat grapefruit occasionally; in Switzerland they eat sweet jam or honey, and not our bitter marmalade, with their rolls; while in Austria they favour sweets in the form of honey. Apart from our own egg, bacon, tea and toast breakfast, the more out-of-the-ordinary fare is found in the extreme West and in Scandinavia. In Portugal the peasants start the day with a slice of bread, taken wipi a raw onion and neat brandy, but in the towns they favour the French roll and coffee meal., Norway starts the day well with a heavy meal, consisting of a cold buffet, of meat, sausage and smoked fish, which is eaten with coffee, rolls and a choice of about a dozen varieties of cheese, the most popular being gjetost, or goat’s milk cheese, which is called “chocolate cheese”, by European tourists on account of its colour. In Sweden they eat sweet cakes with their coffee, while in Denmark, apart from the delicious rolls of about six different flavours, they often have bread boiled in small beer, which is served with cream after it lias been sieved.