You may be aware of the odd tradition some couples perform on their wedding day, freezing pieces of their wedding cake to enjoy on an anniversary years down the road.
Who’d get the cake if they divorced before then anyway? Now that’s food for thought!
But we digress – this slice of preserved history surely takes the cake when it comes to trying to justify that ‘Best Before’ date.
The Antarctic Heritage Trust team in New Zealand discovered the historic cake in question – a 100-year-old Huntley & Palmer’s fruitcake – in a Cape Adare-abandoned explorer hut in Antarctica. We don’t want to speak for them, but this cake has to be their most cherished find from nearly 1,500 Cape Adare artifacts the team’s accrued since they started searching over a year ago.
While the tin can the cake was protected in looks its age, it did a fine job in preserving the century-old fruitcake. According to a statement from the Antarctic Heritage Trust, the ancient cake “looked and smelt (almost) edible.”
Related: What You Didn’t Know About Best-Before and Expiry Dates
“With just two weeks to go on the conservation of the Cape Adare artifacts, finding such a perfectly preserved fruitcake in amongst the last handful of unidentified and severely corroded tins was quite a surprise,” Lizzie Meek, the program’s artifacts manager, said in a statement.
“It’s an ideal high-energy food for Antarctic conditions, and is still a favorite item on modern trips to the Ice.”
The group has dated the cake all the way back to explorer Robert Falcon Scott’s Terra Nova expedition (1910 to 1913) – there’s even documentation referencing Robert’s adventures alongside his side-cake.
Photo Credits: ratmaner/BigStock; Health.com
