Eggy Soldiers, a British culinary institution!

I´m sure that if you hear “eggy soldiers” the last thing you would think of it would be a dish. You would probably think of an insult or something like that, but never of something edible. The reason why I´m saying all this is that you would be completely wrong thinking that.

The “eggy soldiers” are the quintessential British breakfast, and perfect for breakfast in bed. It consists of soft-boiled eggs, commonly served in eggs cups, where the top of the egg is cut off with a knife leaving a jagged shell edge and using a teaspoon to scoop the egg out. They are accompanied with a buttered toast cut into strips, so that they can be dipped into the runny yolk. And here comes the most curious fact, these strips of toast are called “soldiers”.

There are two theories about the origin of this peculiar name: On the one hand, it may come from the similarities these strips have with the formation of soldiers on parade, then we could say that they seem to be lined up ready for dipping!

On the other hand, the second belief is that it may come from the childhood rhyme “Humpty Dumpty”, probably originally a riddle and one of the best known in the English-speaking world.

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,

Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.

All the King's horses and all the King's men

Couldn't put Humpty together again.

Humpty Dumpty was a large cannon which was mounted on the protective wall of "St. Mary's Wall Church" in Colchester, England. It was intended to protect the Parliamentarian stronghold which was temporarily in control of the Royalists during the English Civil War (1642 - 1649). A shot from a Parliamentary cannon succeeded in damaging the wall underneath Humpty Dumpty causing the cannon to fall to the ground. The Royalists (“all the King's men”) attempted to raise Humpty Dumpty on to another part of the wall but, even with the help of “all the King's horses”, they failed in their task and Colchester fell to the Parliamentarians after a siege lasting eleven weeks.

Now I guess you will be wondering what this rhyme has to do with the eggy soldiers, so here it´s the answer: Humpty Dumpty is typically portrayed as an egg, due to it was a colloquial term used in the 18^th century in England to describe someone who was obese and clumsy, and the strips of toast refer to the soldiers who went to rescue Humpty Dumpty when he has his “great fall”.

Something worth mentioning is that the popularity of this breakfast is so big that there are some devices for cutting the bread into thin strips and also into soldiers, as The Daily Telegraph reported in 2005 when the first one was invented by Mike Minton, an electronics engineer. Apart from that device, remember, you can also use your imagination and surprise your little visitors!

Hope you enjoyed it!