Marmite Soldiers

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One of the delights of my childhood (and one which has persisted until today) is to eat a perfectly cooked boiled egg with a firm white and a creamy but still wholly liquid yolk. Boiling an egg to such perfection is an art which I shall save for another article. I was always taught to crack the egg carefully all around the top by hitting it with the spoon and then to peel off the top of the shell before taking the top white off to expose the yolk. Others will attack the egg boldly with a knife, slicing the top off and scooping out the white with a spoon. Whichever way you do it (and the arguments for and against on each side are nearly as pointless as the one which drove the Lilliputians to mortal combat), the result should be the same - exposure of the cooked but runny yolk to view. The yolk is the ‘soul’ of an egg and really has to be savoured first. One of my most favourite ways of doing this is to dip long, thin pieces of toast into the rich, yellow liquid and eat it by biting off the golden tips. Much better, though, if the toast is already salted and spiced with England’s favourite spread - Marmite. Most of you probably don’t have a clue what Marmite is, though you may have heard of it. Rumours have reached me that it is actually banned by the FDA, though I know that it is obtainable in the US, at least, from a number of websites specialising in English comestibles. Marmite is a dark brown, very salty liquid, syrupy in consistency, which may be spread very thinly on buttered bread or toast and consumed at breakfast or tea (or, indeed, at any other time of the day). It was originally made, I believe, as a concentrated vegetarian stock, rich in B vitamins, but most people use it today as a spread on bread or toast. So what, you may ask, are ‘Marmite Soldiers’? Well, they are thin strips of toast (usually the crusts) which have been spread with butter and Marmite and are just if the right thickness to dip into that golden heaven at the middle of an egg. They are called ‘soldiers’, I think, from the days when nearly every boy owned a set of lead soldiers who all permanently stood to attention bravely in the face of our little spring-loaded cannons loaded, maybe, with dried peas. So how do you eat your boiled eggs? Do you still dip your ‘soldiers’ in the glorious mire of the egg’s yolk and then bite off their legs?