alt Hacker NewsThe Hunt for Dark Breakfast
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Please allow me to introuce you to the sri lankan egg hopper (https://www.lavenderandlovage.com/2016/05/sri-lankan-egg-hop...) which lives squarely in the aforementioned dark abyss.
This article doesn't do it justice, but the Womelette at the short-lived Royal Canadian Pancake House in NYC lived in the dark abyss.
https://www.eater.com/2015/1/26/7860903/amanda-cohen-royal-c...
It wasn't just an omelette on top of a waffle (and both of them the size of a medium pizza). As you strayed from the edges toward the center it became difficult to see where the waffle ended and the omelette began.
Such a shame they went out of business.
Going against the spirit of TFA here, but I believe you can eat anything at any time of day, and my favorite breakfast tends to be regular food. Chili, soup, pasta, baked potatoes. Something warm, filling, and usually involving salt. I do sometimes have something more traditional, like oatmeal, but it's not as satisfying. I also sometimes have oatmeal as my final meal of the day if I'm hungry but already a bit tired, as it's more calm than something like spicy chili.
In Malaysia, a common breakfast is roti telur + teh tarik which is close to the dark breakfast region. It's like paratha, with an egg, and milk tea.
It is difficult to put milk into food. Why not just drink it? Alternatively, can we drink eggs and flour?
Cheese is another variation for milk. What about grilled cheese and eggs? Or some variation on Mac and Cheese?
You can also consider other dimensions like vegetables and spices. According to this plane, shakshuka is pure egg. Add spices to milk and you have chai. Add eggs to chai and you have cursed eggnog.
Someone else may have said this but strictly speaking breakfast is something like a cone in a vector space, unless you want to explain to me how to eat negative eggs.
Haha. I'd suggest that what's missing in the um "latent space" here, is that the triangle should be a pentagon involving some form of bacon/sausage, and some form of potato.
This cracked me up, because I had a fantastic dream the other night where I had a tour through a donut factory. But the best thing I had (in the dream) was something I'd never tried before, never seen, and which I intend to make at the earliest opportunity. It was slightly salty french fries, buttered and coated in sugar and cinnamon, like cinnamon toast. Bang on. Makes a lot of sense too, if you think about it. Definitely would fit in the "dark breakfast" polygon.
[edit] the potato and bacon theory also comes from what ends up deliciously mixed on your plate at the end, which along with syrup and ketchup is also an integral part of any egg/flour/milk breakfast.
If you add baking powder and butter, that dark breakfast recipe is very close to crepes.
My crepe recipe - cook on medium heat pan:
Blend on low: 4 eggs- 3/4 cup whole milk, 1/2 stick of melted butter, and 1/4cup to 1/2 cup plain flower, 1 heaped tbsp of baking powder, 1/2 tsp salt, vanilla optional and to taste
The recipe at the end sounds a lot like the crepes I'd make in college. It was pre-WWW and I had no idea what I was doing but it seemed to work. The one thing I had going for me in college was a Costco membership. 25lb bags of flour, gallons of milk, and flats of eggs.. all cheap. I'd barter with roommates for crepe toppings (sour cream and jelly usually).
The concept of a 'Dark Breakfast Abyss' in the Breakfast Simplex is hilarious, but it got me thinking—maybe the reason we lack foods in that specific ratio of milk, flour, and eggs isn't because they'd destroy the world, but because they simply don't cook well conceptually. Like, an overly-battered omelette just turns into a gummy mess, not a crepe. It's fascinating how our culinary traditions naturally naturally sort themselves into these distinct mathematical vertices over centuries of trial and error.
Eastern European pan-fried cottage cheese fritters (mix and fry 150g cottage cheese, 5 tbsp flour, 1 egg, 3 tbsp sugar, salt) are great. That's all I have to say.
where's porridge?
Breakfast has way more dimensions.
Salzburger Nockerln seems to fit in that area. https://www.austria.info/en-gb/recipes/salzburger-nockerl/
This whole thing is simply missing all milk based diary products like cheese, yogurt, white cheese, etc. When that is included then there is no gap or any mysterious quadrant.
I feel like excluding French toast is a serious faux pas here!
Breakfast burritos are also at least as important as quiche (as in, neither are as tasty without addins - just like omelettes).
I suggest that the forbidden breakfast is tantamount to an eggs benedict, but with the hollandaise sauce replaced by a roux.
Love how at at the milk apex, there is cafe latte. Of course, it couldn't just be milk, perish the thought!
Posts like this are why I read Hacker News.
My Egg McMuffin will never look the same!
Maybe a type of breakfast souffle?
Egg scramble fluffed with milk plus slice of toast might qualify
This is amazing - and somehow channels both Douglas Adams and Randall Munroe at the same time...
What sort of projection is this that turns a 3-dimensional space into a triangle!
Fancy projection math is only for after coffee!
A Japanese Souffle Pancake might be in the Dark Breakfast realm.
What about eggs eggs and milk breakfast? (Omelette with cheese). Plenty of protein and little sugar
Aggakake or oeuf au lait.
3 eggs, 2 cups milk, 1 cup flour. Makes a nice flan/pudding consistency. Eggy and delicious.
Might choux hit that dark breakfast abyss? They aren't breakfast per se, but it might show that you can do things with those proportions.
Breakfast is just generally milquetoast then?
The ones who walk away from omelettes.
What about french toast? I feel like there is a lot of egg in it, might place it near the bottom of the abyss.
As a certified expert breakfast cook, I bristle at the idea that scrambled eggs includes any ingredient other than eggs or seasoning.
Also, while I know that omelette is technically the whipping of large amounts of air into what is otherwise scrambled eggs, it feels wrong to me that "omelette" is categorized as "pure egg singularity". Is an omelette worth the time and effort over scrambled eggs if it does not include bits of vegetables, meat, and/or cheese folded inside like a taco?
This is the kind of creative thinking that makes HN great. Using the framework of dark matter detection to explore unobserved breakfast possibilities is both hilarious and oddly rigorous. The breakfast phase space is clearly under-explored.
Congratulations. You've reinvented the souffle.
I love the idea and the writing, but the execution seems off. Cake has a very well-defined spot and Weetabix doesn’t? More work needed
french toast was dismissed far too lightly, it's exactly what goes into the gap. also savoury bread pudding.
This reminded me of <https://xkcd.com/2893/>.
No mention of Eggs Florentine?
I usually have egg on toast with plenty of butter. The combination sits squarely in the dark region I think.
I also get up early and it is often actually dark.
maybe Portugal’s Pastel de Nata falls in the dark zone?
It’s a baked custard (so plenty of eggs) in a pie.
not sure the proportions match.
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What about vegetable-forward breakfasts? Completely not on this chart.
I sympathize with the author, I've had similar thoughts about snacks. We need more non-sweet snacks. Ideally something that tastes good, is not too salty, is healthy and satisfies your cravings.