While breakfast may not technically be the most important meal of the day — that was an idea hyped by breakfast food companies in the late 1800s — it’s a good idea to start your morning with some fuel to get you pumped up and going. Especially if it’s free. Many hotels offer guests a free morning meal and they often use the term continental breakfast to describe this perk. But what we think of as a continental breakfast in the United States today has come a long way from what it originally meant.
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 Today I Found Out | 2017-10-15 16:30:00 |  194,251 Views |
Why are continental breakfasts called that?
Back in the early 1800s when the continental breakfast originated in America it was a light meal consisting of coffee and a roll. As travel became more common and Europeans began to visit the US en masse American hotels began to cater to this clientele who preferred lighter fare. While Merriam-Webster still defines continental breakfast as “a light breakfast (such as rolls… and coffee)” in hotel jargon today it refers to a breakfast buffet where guests are free to feast on a wide variety of food options such as muffins fresh fruit and waffles. So how did the continental breakfast go from a light European meal to a full buffet?
The British used the term continental to refer to things related to the European mainland including their lighter morning meals which the British called a continental breakfast. The Americans also adopted the term. And like the British they preferred a more substantial breakfast. In 1896 a section of "The Sanitarian" quoted a complaint from the American magazine Harper's Weekly about the rise of the "continental breakfast" which was replacing the traditional fare of "large steaks hot rolls buckwheat cakes omelettes … even pie." The author went on to complain that "pie was banished first and the other heavy articles gradually followed its exile and breakfast has been robbed of its glory."
The lighter version of the continental breakfast ruled for much of the 20th century. The 1950s saw the rise of restaurants serving a wide variety of European often French cuisines—or an American approximation thereof—and it became popular. At some point “continental” became synonymous with the wide variety of menu items these restaurants offered rather than the origins of the food. And so when referring to breakfast the word continental still denotes a wide array of choices rather than anything resembling a light European morning meal.
