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Meals: Customs / Scheduling / Naming

Wait? Breakfast, dinner, tea, and supper! I was deprived!
 
You get 'ladies who lunch' in posh circles, do you get 'dandys that dinner'?
 
Wait wait, Elevenses is now 'brunch' or is that separate ? And what about Tiffin - Afternoon Tea ?
 
Zeke Newbold said:
I grew up in a middle-class household in the northwest of England.For us it was strictly Breakfast -Dinner - Tea, both at home and at school. The word `supper` was given the odd mention - but that meant a mug of coca before going to bed.

The word `lunch` was only ever uttered in relation to `lunch-box` - ie a few sanwhiches in a plastic container.

Then - sometime in the late Eighties, I think - the word `lunch` started to be used in my environment (which was then still the North for me). This felt like some sort of betrayal to my mind. To this day, whenever I hear the word `lunch` I get a mental association of a lunchbox - and with crappy stale sandwiches instead of a hot meal. It's most unappetising and is enough to put me off my dinner.
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Soup / to sup / supper.

For me, supper is a smaller, later meal.

Dinner, in my mind, can be any meal that is suitably substantial.

At school we had 'school dinners' in the early afternoon; at Christmas we have Christmas Dinner before the Queen's speech. Both would feature dessert, of course, although my grandparents favoured 'sweet'.

Similarly, we might go out for dinner at a restaurant, but we'd tend to have fish n' chips at home for our tea. But then, incongrously, we'd have them in a dining room..

As a child, we'd always say 'tea' for a 6 to 7 p.m. meal, but I seem to have lost the habit. Too long overseas, perhaps.
 
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Swifty said:
my father says we're not allowed to play together anymore.
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A pity, that - I was always seeking bad influences!

To clarify, the eating-habits of the lower middle-class were still those of working-people, in the North, at least.

The shift to evening dinners was driven, in this case, by a change of working-pattern by the sole bread-winner. We perceived it, culturally, as a step up*, which can probably be ascribed to the influence of television, where southern norms prevailed. :party:

*The need to commute and the lack of local opportunities, on reflection, were not really signs of upward mobility.
 
When someone points to a stain on your pully under your chin, you scratch at it and say 'Oh dammit, it's dinner!'

Hope this helps.
 
escargot said:
When someone points to a stain on your pully under your chin, you scratch at it and say 'Oh dammit, it's dinner!'

Hope this helps.
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I think you may have to translate that for our friends across the pond :hahazebs:
 
For us growing up in North London,

It was

Breakfast 7am
Elevenses 11AM (A drink and two biscuits)
Lunch 1PM (Fairly substantial but smaller than supper)
Tea 4.30 PM (A cup of tea, piece of cake or a few biscuits.)
Supper 7.30pm (Main evening meal.)

Dinner was not really used as a meal description, except at school when the phrase "school dinners" was used for lunch.

Sundays were different, we often would eat either large lunch around 2PM, or a small lunch around 1PM then a large tea around 4PM which was really a meal with lots of sandwiches and cake.

A neighbouring family had moved to London from Lancashire, and had their Tea around 6PM, which was a meal.
They ate a small snack later at night called Supper.

Additional crisps were eaten whenever we had the opportunity, though I seldom ate them before 11AM.
Unlike Keith, who was a chubby kid who would eat them whilst waiting for the bus to school.
He would have this large wool blazer, with a packet of crisps open in both deep side pockets, both packets would be different
i.e. Pickled Onion Monster Munch in one, Quavers in the other.
He eat them in no particular order, mixing the flavours.
He'd often have another packet stashed underneath, so he would eat four packets of crisps in total.
Sometimes he'd simultaneously have a Wham bar on the go, tucked away in an inside pocket, rotating it's sickly sweet taste with that of the savoury crisps.
This bright pink plastic-like substance, embedded with small hard nuggets of fizzy sherbert, would inevitably collect bits of wool fibre from the blazer, which did not at all deter Keith from eating it.



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For us as Jews, meals on the Sabbath are ordered with different spiritual significances, and involve ritual hand washing before and after each meal, and the mandatory eating of bread.

A large cooked meal will be eaten Friday night.
Saturday breakfast is light, not really classed as a meal.
Lunch is substantial, counting as the second meal of the Sabbath.
There is then a third meal of the Sabbath late afternoon.
After the Sabbath goes out, an extra smallish meal is eaten.
 
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Huh. As a Yank, I'll chime in here....

I always grew up on breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

Breakfast was served as soon as you got up (or a short time after) and usually consisted of eggs, bacon, toast, etc. Omelets, French Toast (which I'm craving now, oddly enough), or pancakes if you're feeling fancy.

Lunch was around noon. Typically either a sandwich with some sort of simple side (a bag of "crisps" I think is the proper term 'cross the pond) or anything that would fit in a small bowl (soup, pasta, etc.).

Dinner was always the main meal, typically served anywhere from 5 to 7pm. That's where you get your meat, vegetables, and carbs from.

Dessert could be served after dinner, but in my house was never expected.

EDIT: I should explain that this was in the upper Midwest, near Lake Michigan, 1980's to 1990's
 
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In my childhood background (1950s / 1960s; southern USA) the general pattern was similar to what MercuryCrest outlined, but with differences.

My entire paternal family (3 generations) lived in 5 households side-by-side. The family's 2 earlier generations had begun on the farm and transitioned to generally suburban lifestyle and blue-collar / white-collar wage earners. Because of this we retained the older (farm-style) terminology (breakfast, dinner, supper) during most of my childhood. The family meal pattern, however, was the same in all 5 households and more like the suburban format:

- breakfast (full breakfast; immediately upon getting out of bed);
- midday "dinner" (light meal at home; no less than a sandwich with chips; circa 1200 - 1300);
- evening "supper" (heavy meal; ready when the breadwinner(s) arrived home from work circa 1730 - 1800).

At school the midday meal was always referred to as "lunch", and this label slowly supplanted "dinner" for the midday meal back at home.

At school the typical lunch was a full plate with a meat entree, two vegetables, milk, bread, and usually some sort of fruit or salad. Desserts were not always provided. Occasionally the main fare would be a hot sandwich. Extra helpings were allowed once everyone had been served and the supply lasted. We ate quite well and as heartily as we wanted.

It took longer for "dinner" to supplant "supper" as the family (environs) label for the evening meal.
 
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EnolaGaia said:
The family's 2 earlier generations had begun on the farm and transitioned to generally suburban lifestyle and blue-collar / white-collar wage earners. Because of this we retained the older (farm-style) terminology (breakfast, dinner, supper) during most of my childhood.

- breakfast (full breakfast; immediately upon getting out of bed);
- midday "dinner" (light meal at home; no less than a sandwich with chips; circa 1200 - 1300);
- evening "supper" (heavy meal; ready when the breadwinner(s) arrived home from work circa 1730 - 1800).
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Yep, Canadian and raised on farm. Though dinner was more the larger meal as if people were helping with any type of harvesting, you had large meal around noon-1ish.

Supper was later in evening, sometimes 8ish (as long as us kids would wait) as my mom wanted to wait until my dad got in from planting the fields or whatever he was working on, so quite late. And it wouldn't be as big as the midday meal, but substantial anyway.

We always had dessert. Not for breakfast though:).
 
Up until the early-mid 19th century, breakfast was eaten after a couple of hour's work, then dinner (the main cooked meal) was eaten at any time from 12 noon (Tudor times) to 4pm (the Regency era). If you were lucky you got a supper before retiring to bed! Given that the majority of people would rise at dawn and retire at dusk the timings aren't too far off.

After the advent of regular working hours and factory shifts, combined with a richer incomes, dinners became later the higher one moved up the income scale - by 1820 rich/fashionable people were dining at 7pm or later - and luncheon slipped into the gap :)

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-20243692
 
I once had a devil of a job trying to explain to two middle-aged Japanese women that the word 'tea' to describe the evening meal wasn't the drink, it was a meal. They had good English but had real difficulty in understanding that the word 'tea' could have another meaning. They just couldn't get it and asked things like "No vegetables?"
 
From the 1970s, Eastern England - middle of the day was usually lunch, even though we had dinner ladies at school. Evening meal was interchangeably tea or dinner, depending on how substantial it was. At weekends, when the heavy meal was in the middle of the day - and still known as lunch - the evening meal tended to be tea, but the main meal during the week could be labelled either way. Then my dad would occasionally have a chunk of cheese and a bag of crisps in front of the telly at about 9 pm some weekends. I understand this tends to be his preference these days as, retired and single, he gets to have his main meal during the day instead.
 
Growing up in the 1960s in the northern midwest US, near Chicago, our working class meals were breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Snacks were unscheduled. At that same time, one of my aunts who married a farmer from Kentucky, changed her meal names to breakfast, lunch and supper.

However, after reading this thread as well as the tea towel discussion, I am changing to breakfast, lunch, tea, dinner, and unscheduled snacks. Please, can someone tell me how to add yet anther meal into this equation, in a suitably dignified fashion?
 
Endlessly Amazed said:
Growing up in the 1960s in the northern midwest US, near Chicago, our working class meals were breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Snacks were unscheduled. At that same time, one of my aunts who married a farmer from Kentucky, changed her meal names to breakfast, lunch and supper.

However, after reading this thread as well as the tea towel discussion, I am changing to breakfast, lunch, tea, dinner, and unscheduled snacks. Please, can someone tell me how to add yet anther meal into this equation, in a suitably dignified fashion?
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Did somebody mention brunch...?
 
Endlessly Amazed said:
Growing up in the 1960s in the northern midwest US, near Chicago, our working class meals were breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Snacks were unscheduled. At that same time, one of my aunts who married a farmer from Kentucky, changed her meal names to breakfast, lunch and supper.

However, after reading this thread as well as the tea towel discussion, I am changing to breakfast, lunch, tea, dinner, and unscheduled snacks. Please, can someone tell me how to add yet anther meal into this equation, in a suitably dignified fashion?
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Afternoon tea is always good, pot of tea and a few cucumber sandwiches (with crusts cut off) and scones, clotted cream and jam.
 
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