As I was eating a lovely full English (fE) earlier, it occured to me that although sausages and burgers are essentially the same thing - both being minced bits of animal, with seasoning, h & s, with the sausage having a casing - you'd never put a burger in a fE. Does anyone know/ have any theories why? It obviously goes back decades, but it persists to this day, and I'd bet good money that not one single chef - not even your fancy, shmancy Blumenthals - would advocate it. Historically was it cost? Were pigs just much more indigenous than cattle? Did we even have burgers in England when the fE was 'invented'? Is there a culinary reason why no-one does it (too greasy for e.g.)?

I wouldn't really say they're essentially the same thing, far more work goes into a sausage, I make both from scratch and sausages are quite an art form requiring pretty precise ratios of ingredients.

A burger tends to be just that, a burger in a bun. Sausages can be eaten in many ways, in hotdogs, with gravy and mash, with pasta etc etc. A sausage is a lot more versatile than a burger. Sausages are a lot older than burgers too, it's widely claimed that burgers were invented around the late 1800s and it would have probably been a while until they made it to the UK, whereas sausages date back to Roman times!

I'll admit I don't really know, but they might do here: http://englishbreakfastsociety.com/index.html

Sausages and burgers are the same thing? Well I never.

Beef is a lot more expensive meat than pork for a start. Also, I don't know about anyone else but eating beef makes me sleepy.

But not all sausages are made of pork and not all burgers are made of beef.

Burger King do a breakfast burger, the Big Beefy:


http://lousyreviews.blogspot.co.uk/2...ou-get-is.html

Sounds quite nice, will have to try it one day

Simple answer...tradition. Wikipedia has the full history together with regional and international variations, but not a single mention of burgers, even in the US.

I recently went on a trip to Berlin. Our hotel served a full English breakfast that included some kind of mini-burgers. They were made of sausage meat and tasted really nice.

Didn't most families in the coutryside used to keep a pig for meat, which they would butcher and use for 'nose to tail' eating. Not much waste on a pig, and relatively easy to keep - less space required than for a cow, will eat scraps. If a cow was kept at all, it was for milk, not eating, so the masses had more access to pork than beef.

Perhaps this has something to do with the bacon and sausage for breakfast tradition?

is this a bit like ........ the chicken and the egg question ??

I thought it was more a 'why did the chicken cross the road?' when I read the title.

Probably Frikadellen. They're yummy!

Yes ^^^^^ that too