Toast Soldiers

Thin slice of bread, toasted on both sides, optionally buttered, cut into slim strips for dipping, most commonly in boiled eggs.


Toast Soldiers
Image: "Glane23"

Amazingly, there doesn't seem to be any written reference to toast soldiers before Nicolas Freeling's novel 'The Dresden Green' of 1966, and there it was as an accompaniment to potato soup. There is an early reference, but not the TS name, in Bradley 1728 to a "garnish of fry'd Bread, cut the length of one's Finger", as an accompaniment to boiled tench.

The concept of toast soldiers with boiled eggs seems to have been popularised, or possibly invented, for a series of 1965 TV Commercials for eggs starring Tony Hancock and Patricia Hayes