Mark Dominus

“Breakfast is a vector space. You can place pancakes, crepes, and scrambled eggs on a simplex where the variables are the ratios between milk, eggs, and flour. We have explored too little of this manifold. More breakfasts can exist than we have known.”

https://moultano.wordpress.com/2026/02/22/the-hunt-for-dark-breakfast/

The Hunt for Dark Breakfast

With a theoretical model of breakfast, can we derive the existence of “dark breakfasts,” breakfasts that we know must exist, but have never observed?

Ryan Moulton's Articles
Feb 26 at 8:24amWeb
Show threadAbhijit Menon-SenFeb 26
@mjd Our most common breakfasts are entirely outside this triangle. :-)
Show threadMark DominusFeb 26
@amenonsen Details please!
Show threadbigiainFeb 26
@mjd @amenonsen I find it lacks bacon, sausages, and to a slightly lesser extent hash browns and baked beans. And cheese.And it’s missing the entire cereal vector with its associated fruit and yoghurt accompaniments
Show threadAbhijit Menon-SenFeb 26

@mjd Recent examples:

1. Steel-cut oats cooked in water with seeds and berries and dried fruit
2. Whole legumes (bengal gram, white/black soya, horse gram) pressure-cooked and tempered with onions and some spices
3. Cracked whole wheat or roasted buckwheat, likewise
4. Sorghum flakes, cooked with onions and peas and curry leaves and stuff
5. Something conceptually (but not at all culturally) similar to (4), but made with tapioca pearls
6. Dosas of different kinds made with ground millets and lentils, some with onions/garlic/tomatoes/ginger/etc.
7. Upma made from semolina flour with vegetables
8. Steamed bananas of a specific variety from south India (nendrapazham)
9. Puttu-kadala, a steamed cylinder of coarse-ground substrate (traditionally rice, but we make it with other stuff) with coconut, served with a curry made with bengal gram
10. Pancakes made from besan (bengal gram flour) and water with chopped-up onions and chillies and vegetables

Some of these things sidle up close to the "flour" corner, I suppose.

Show threadRichard PennerFeb 26
@mjd @amenonsen Fried plantains/bananas form a breakfast staple, sometimes with beans or a sour cream analogue called crema
Show threadAbhijit Menon-SenFeb 26

@Arpie4Math Where is it commonly eaten?

@mjd

Show threadRichard PennerFeb 26
@amenonsen @mjd Certainly in Cuba, Mexico, and large US Cities like New York and Los Angeles, and the California Central Valley. Likely in much of the Americas, but my first fried bananas were gifted as a lunch side from the Filipino mother of a friend.
Show threadMark DominusFeb 26
@Arpie4Math @amenonsen There is a Dominican restaurant around here that serves tres golpes, which is mangú (mashed green plantains), fried salami, and fried white cheese.
Show threadRichard PennerFeb 26

@mjd @amenonsen Pardon, did you mean mashed like mashed potatoes or mashed like cutting the plantain into short cylinders and squashing those along the axis into individual fried stars?

// Did the research: boiled and mashed ✅

Show threadMark DominusFeb 26
@Arpie4Math @amenonsen Axially-cut smashed plantain slices are called tostones.
Show threadAbhijit Menon-SenFeb 27

@mjd

There's something oddly formal about this sentence. 😆 Like "tostones" is a title conferred on axially-cut smashed plantain slices in recognition of their sacrifice.

@Arpie4Math

Show threadRichard PennerFeb 27

@amenonsen @mjd They do rather resemble a service medal: https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/16768/puerto-rican-tostones-fried-plantains/ (chosen for images, not necessarily the recipe)

Please bury me with my tostones and other worldly goods — like a pharaoh with Mesoamerican roots.

Show threadRichard PennerFeb 26
@mjd Eggnog + Grape Nuts
Show threadTim HuttonFeb 26
@mjd The Black Void That Must Be Avoided in the lime gin cocktails quadrant:
Show threadnot a martian, honestFeb 26
@mjd while this is all cute it lacks breakfast cereals (like müsli) or simple open sandwiches. Or, e.g. rice or oatmeal. In fact it seems this article barely scratches the surface of breakfast at all.
Show thread⁂ Fish Id WardrobeFeb 27
@kyonshi @mjd toast…
Show threadJim CampbellFeb 27

@mjd

There doesn't appear to be a name space for Toad in the Hole, but that's fine, it would certainly be within the triangle.

The triangle, btw, ought to be a pyramid, but that also is fine. The depth would represent sugar and would more correctly position some of the already displayed items.

Now where do we put Stargazy Pie?

.

Show threadMark DominusFeb 27
@JustJimWillDo It looks to me like it's on the edge of the pancake cluster, which is what I would expect. The first recipe I found was egg:flour:milk in an 8:6:7 ratio.
Show threadMatthew AbbottFeb 27
@mjd @kyonshi If we’re talking Dark Breakfast, we need to be sure to include cold pizza