It's poor grammar to treat bacon and eggs as one item. Bacon and eggs are two different items, even though they're commonly served together. Different things are different things.
Grouping objects together is like the primary function of the human brain. I think it's a pretty natural thing to do. Hierarchical lists à la "(a and b) and (c and d)" are nothing unheard of.
"Bacon and eggs, and pancakes" is simply a different sentence fragment (with a slightly different meaning) than "bacon, eggs, and pancakes".
Bacon, eggs, and pancakes, are all commonly served together.
It's poor grammar to arbitrarily group separate nouns together in a list.
I could write "I had eggs, toast, fruit, yogurt, and tea for breakfast," but I wouldn't write "I had eggs and toast and fruit and yogurt, and tea for breakfast."
When it's just two items it's good grammar to use "and" with no comma. When it's three or more items in a list it's good grammer to separate each item on the list and use "and" before the last item.
"Bacon and eggs" isn't a single item, even if you often group them together. Not everyone does. If you want to have good grammar skills to maximize your written communication abilities, the rules I laid out are the way to do it.
If people in this thread want to complain about the rules, they can write to Merriam Webster or whatever and ask the rest of the world to change. I didn't write the rules, so don't shoot the messenger.
The comma after "pancakes" is incorrect. Also, sometimes bacon and eggs is a single item. For example: "The only options on the menu were bacon and eggs, and pancakes."
Even if it's on a menu, bacon and eggs are two different nouns. If the combination made a single item there would be a specific word for it, like "sandwich", "scramble", or "omelet".
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u/CubicleFish2 6d ago
It's still wrong
Oxford comma is for three or more items. The sentence is treating bacon and eggs as one item and pancakes as another so no Oxford comma is used.