Chipped beef on toast (or creamed chipped beef on toast) is a foodstuff comprised of a creamy sauce and rehydrated slivers of dried beef, served on toasted bread. In military slang it is commonly referred to with the dysphemism "Shit On a Shingle" (SOS).

Wentworth and Flexner cite no origin, but note that "shingle" for slice of toast has had "some use since c1935" in the U. S. Army, mostly in the expression "shit on a shingle," and that the latter had "wide W. W. II Army use."

Chipped beef itself is a dried, smoked, and salted meat product. The modern product consists of small, thin, flexible leaves of partially dried beef, generally sold compressed together in jars or flat in plastic packets. Hormel describes it as "an air-dried product that is similar to bresaola, but not as tasty."

In the U. S., chipped beef on toast is emblematic of the U. S. military experience, much as yellow pea soup is in Finland. "Chipped beef on toast (S. O. S.)" is, in fact, the title of a book of military humor. In his World War II book, Band of Brothers, Stephen E. Ambrose evokes the military basics:

At the end of May, the men of Easy packed up their barracks bags and ... [took] a stop-and-go train ride to Sturgis, Kentucky. At the depot Red Cross girls had coffee and doughnuts for them, the last bit of comfort they would know for a month. They marched out to the countryside and pitched pup tents, dug straggle trenches for latrines, and ate the Army's favorite meal for troops in the field, creamed chipped beef on toast, universally known as SOS, or Shit on a Shingle.

In a 2004 story, Chuck Palahniuk talks about deprecated language in "the new and politically corrected Navy" where he says that in official theory, but not in practice,

the dark-blue coveralls crewmen wear while on patrol are no longer called "poopie suits." Crewmen who serve on the mess deck are no longer "mess cranks." Sauerbraten is not "donkey dick." Ravioli isn't "pillows of death." Creamed chipped beef on toast isn't "shit on a shingle."

Chipped beef was, of course, also a component of ordinary civilian cuisine. Its use was common in the U. S. a few decades ago. A 1965 edition of the Fannie Farmer cookbook gives two recipes for preparing chipped beef ("Separate the slices and remove any stringy bits...") and two that use it as an ingredient. It is still readily available as of 2005 but, like SPAM, has declined greatly in popularity due to a reduced need for foods that can be stored without refrigeration.

See also

• Chipped beef on toast, an historical 1910 Army recipe for preparing "enough for 60 men"

References

• Ambrose, Stephen E. (2001) Band of Brothers : E Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne from Normandy to Hitler's Eagle's Nest
• Bertram, Charles S. (2003), Chipped Beef on Toast (S. O. S.), ISBN 0741415542
• Beef-Dried (Hormel website)
• Pahlahniuk, Chuck (2004) Stranger Than Fiction: True Stories Doubleday, ISBN 0385504489
• Wentworth, Harold, and Stuart Berg Flexner (1967), Dictionary of American Slang, supplemented edition. Thomas Y. Crowell, New York.