I had fun working out the perfect formula for breakfast for the London Review of Breakfasts.
(The fact that I wrote it in Paris is neither here nor there.)
Here's an excerpt - if you'd like to find the solution to breakfast, read more here.
Breakfast is a matter of proportion.
Any proportion can be expressed and analysed mathematically.
Take the four basic breakfast ingredients: egg, bacon, tomato, sausage.
The first thing to notice is that they can be eaten in various combinations. The taste of each ingredient is enhanced by combination with another. This is one of the chief pleasures of breakfast. Some people prefer the taste of sausage with egg; others, bacon with tomato. Fewer will eat sausage with tomato, and almost none, tomato with egg or sausage with bacon. This can be expressed thus:
Interesting results can be gained from converting this into a Venn diagram showing the most popular combinations, which expresses a fascinating and pleasing circularity accounting, perhaps, for the continuing popularity of the four basic ingredients (please ignore the central shaded area on the diagream below, which we shall come back to later).


