The word breakfast was first coined in English in 1463 to describe the meal eaten to break the fast of the night. If you break that fast with a nutritious meal you are set up for the day. This week, January 22 to 28, is Farmhouse Breakfast Week. Now in its 13th year, this annual campaign is organised by the HGCA which is the cereals and oilseeds division of the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board. The aim is to raise awareness of the benefits of eating a healthy breakfast and demonstrate the variety of breakfast foods available in the UK.

For many of us breakfast is a quick cup of coffee or tea, often drunk in big gulps as we rush around the house getting ready for work. Sadly, few actually sit down and consume a cooked breakfast these days — despite it being considered the most important meal of the day — unless of course it is a special occasion.

If eaten within two hours of waking, a well-balanced breakfast will provide enough calories for 20 to 35 per cent of our daily energy needs. Milk and yogurts provide the body with protein, bread and cereals provide carbohydrates for energy as well as vitamins, minerals and fibre, a piece of fruit starts you on your five-a-day count and beans, eggs, low-fat bacon or kippers all provide added protein.

Breakfast wasn’t always ignored. There was a time when a hearty breakfast was really taken seriously. During the 19th century, for example, Oxford undergraduates elevated it to a celebratory meal, by beginning the day with a breakfast party which they held in their rooms. The spread that their long-suffering scout painstakingly carried from the college kitchen to their rooms was quite extraordinary. On reading the lists of foods placed on the groaning breakfast tables, one wonders how they could have possibly managed to eat lunch and dinner the same day.

Such breakfasts served in Victorian and Edwardian England would take place after the undergraduate’s obligatory morning attendance in chapel and presented just before his guests were about to arrive. It was not unusual for the breakfast to include enormous dishes of fish, cooked fowls embellished with mushrooms and a mound of mashed potatoes on which a pile of sausages were placed (just like the Desperate Dan cartoon feasts of yesteryear).

There would also be dishes of eggs and omelettes and at least one joint of roast beef, perhaps a joint of ham, and a massive pile of toast. Marmalade, too, thanks to Sarah Jane, the wife of the Oxford grocer Frank Cooper, who began making it for the family shop in in 1874.The taste of her coarse cut marmalade soon became so popular that no Oxford breakfast table would have been complete with at least one jar. For reasons I don’t understand, the undergraduates named Cooper’s Oxford marmalade “squish” Was it after the noise it made when spread lavishly on thick slices of buttered toast?

Training breakfasts for Oxford boat crews in the 1880s were equally massive and included underdone beef steaks, mutton chops, chickens, poached eggs, toast, butter and marmalade, all of which was washed with two breakfast cups of weak tea. Those attending the breakfast who were not in training were regaled sumptuously, too, and permitted to conclude with tankards of College ale, rather than weak tea.

When I lived in Australia, the catering college in which I worked frequently held staff meetings at the breakfast table. The college head argued that starting the day with a companionable meal, and while we were all bright and alert was a very positive way to discuss curriculum matters and put the world to rights. As these breakfasts took place at a very early hour, I am not sure everyone agreed. But they proved an enjoyable way of beginning the day. And, yes, we did get served the ‘full English’ — black pudding, bacon, eggs, beans and sausages. Even fried bread.

The ‘full English’ is something many of us count as one of the pleasures of staying at a British hotel. Perhaps it is because when on holiday we have time to enjoy the delights of this meal without having to check the clock, or cook it for ourselves. Hotel chefs will often admit it is the most difficult meal to cook as they have to juggle serving hot toast, crisping the bacon and cooking the eggs so that they are just right at the same time.

When my dog and I stayed at The Lords at the Manor, in Little Slaughter, we took breakfast in the garden. I must admit that sitting there amid lavender bushes and roses in full bloom — daily newspapers beside me — proved a memorable experience and one to be taken leisurely. It certainly set me up for the rest of the day.