This Is the Best Part of a Full English Breakfast, According to New Research

There's no doubting Britain's love of a fry-up. Drinking your liver into weeping submission and soaking it all up the next day with an array of fried meats, buttered carbs, and grease-laden vegetables is practically a national sport. Even the cancer warnings can't stop us.

What's less certain, however, is exactly which bit of the full English we love the most. Is it the fried eggs with perfectly runny yolks? The two (four) slices of toast? The sausages with brown sauce?

Luckily, YouGov has taken it upon itself to answer that very question. This week, the market research firm released the results of a new survey on "what the ideal full English breakfast looks like."

Researchers asked people in England (sorry full Scottish, full Welsh, and full Ulster fans—yours counts as a different breakfast) about the single most important part of the full English. The results identified nine core ingredients: sausage, beans, toast, hash browns, black pudding, fried eggs, fried mushrooms, fried tomato, and bacon.

And the most important item on that artery-clogging lineup? Bacon, according to 89 percent of survey respondents. Following that was the sausage with 82 percent, then toast and fried eggs.

Poor black pudding, however, didn't stand a chance. The traditional blood sausage languished at the bottom of the list with just 35 percent of survey respondents naming it as their key fry-up component.

YouGov also looked into the differences in breakfast preferences between the sexes. It found that generally, men were more likely to choose breakfast components that began with the word "fried," while women preferred to eat foods that had been "grilled," like tomatoes and mushrooms.

And when it came to our old friend black pudding, the sexes were divided further. The pig blood delicacy featured in 47 percent of men's ideal full English breakfast, compared to just 24 percent of women's.

Overall, the full English breakfast seems to remain king. YouGov found that as many as 83 percent of those surveyed said that they liked the traditional fry-up, compared to just 15 percent who didn't.

Well, you can't please everyone. Pass the ketchup.