Photo by Emily Kemme. In a world of tough questions β where cause and effect is argued to the nth degree so we can get to the meat of things, which is bacon, of course β the question of whether brunch created the iconic Bloody Mary cocktail, or was it the other way around, remains a conundrum.
Because, much as it remains unclear whether it was the egg that hatched the chicken or the chicken who laid that first egg, the popular cocktail many swear by as a hangover cure and the meal during which we often down that cocktail have a tangled relationship. Looking at a timeline helps, although history points to a few reasons why the meal called brunch needed developing.
Brunch is a portmanteau, a word made when breakfast and lunch are squashed together. By eliminating the need to get up early on Sunday, brunch would make life brighter for Saturday-night carousers.
It would promote human happiness in other ways as well. Brunch is cheerful, sociable and inciting. It is talk-compelling. It puts you in a good temper, it makes you satisfied with yourself and your fellow beings, it sweeps away the worries and cobwebs of the week.
Lunch dates to the early 19th century, a period marked by social change. With industrialization, more people were working out of the home, and they needed nourishment to sustain them until dinner. Large lunches called dinner when men returned from working in the fields or in businesses were less frequent, and when women joined the workforce, the large weekday lunch declined even more.
