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100-year old fruit cake found in Antarctica's oldest building
- defterGoose 9y agoIn before the cake rots.
- defterGoose 9y agoJeez this place is joyless
- ChrisRR 9y agoI'll wait for the video of Ashens eating it
- pbhjpbhj 9y agoHadn't heard of Ashens but "Steve" opens a lot of MREs including a 1969 Vietnam war cake, https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVOIgPrDH7E https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVOIgPrDH7E. Edit: Ashens cake from 1 year later, https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Z2zXt6irnOg https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Z2zXt6irnOg.
- Grue3 9y agoThis guy ate a cracker from the time of American Civil War. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ga5JrN9DrVI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ga5JrN9DrVI
- leephillips 9y agoAmusing that the cake was in excellent condition, while the metal box it was stored in was partly decomposed. Once again, reality has one-upped all the jokes.
- lawless123 9y agoEven the microbes don't want it.
- ncr100 9y ago"100 year old fruit cake tastes just like new fruit cake." /s
- aunty_helen 9y agoThe weirdest part about all this is that they have to keep it frozen the whole time and then at the end of it all fly it back down to Antarctica, trek it out to the hut and then leave it there. They did the same with a crate of whiskey they found a couple of years ago. https://www.nzaht.org/pages/shackletons-whisky https://www.nzaht.org/pages/shackletons-whisky
- gideonparanoid 9y agoMy girlfriend has done some work in Antarctica before, she said that it wasn't uncommon to find food ten or twenty years past its use-by-date. This is kind of the next level though.
- pbhjpbhj 9y agoWe found 30+ year expired food in my mother's pantry not long ago. I doubt that's particularly rare in the West.
- dsfyu404ed 9y agoIf it's pasteurized, sealed in a can and stored at room temperature there's not much to make it go bad. The molecules that make up living things (e.g. corn or Spam) are stable at the temperatures at which those things live. If you remove the bacteria that primarily breaks things down there's not going to be much change. It's no different than a house with 200yo timbers.
- Sleeep 9y agoI don't know, I wouldn't want to eat this - https://youtu.be/Kx0obvzqh0Q https://youtu.be/Kx0obvzqh0Q
- nkrisc 9y agoNot quite food, but we found a bottle of Bailey's in my grandmother's basement that was maybe 20-30 years old. It had turned into Bailey's cheese.
- pbhjpbhj 9y agoFood colouring was quite interesting, we didn't open most things. The colouring had sort of plasticised, making gooey long threads like a soft sticky bubble-gum in a greasy, oily solution.
- scruple 9y agoWhen my grandfather passed, we found beer from the 50s and 60s (we guessed at the ages based on the designs -- it was stamped with local sports team memorabilia). We kept some of the Pittsburgh-sports team ones, in fact, and they're at my parents home on display with the rest of my fathers sports memorabilia. I also remember finding very old unopened soda bottles, though I am not sure what happened to those. Point being, I agree with you that it's probably not as rare as one might think on a first pass.
- retox 9y agoCake, instant. Type two. Nice. https://youtube.com/channel/UC2I6Et1JkidnnbWgJFiMeHA https://youtube.com/channel/UC2I6Et1JkidnnbWgJFiMeHA
- parshimers 9y ago"Nice hiss." They really should mail it to him considering it smelled OK. I think he'd try eating a bit of it. I doubt it'd be the worst thing he's tried on that channel, even if the nuts are a bit rancid.
- arethuza 9y agoIt does rather remind me of the cakes that seemed to be popular in the UK in my youth (1970s) that only seemed to be given as presents - nobody ever seemed to eat them.
- theBobBob 9y agoI wonder how many of them were regifted and just passed around for ages.
- vidarh 9y agoOne of my teachers told me of a supposed incident where one of her friends allegedly got the same cake back a year later from a different person than she'd given it to - it was an unusual shape or something. Of course, she might just have wanted to tell a story to get us interested in her lesson on Christmas traditions.
- arethuza 9y agoI think they were passed around until someone needed a wedding cake and then they were covered in marzipan and Chobham armour like icing. These were cut up and sent to people to say thanks for giving wedding presents - I can remember eating the marzipan but never the cake or the impenetrable icing.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- grondilu 9y agoIt looks better than some of the stuff in my fridge.
- throwanem 9y agoStill every bit as edible as the day it was forged, I'm sure. Those things are terrifying. But apparently they make very durable emergency rations! On the one hand, they can last a century, and on the other, you can be sure no one will molest them absent desperate necessity.
- AaronM 9y agoMuch like dwarven bread in Discworld? "A traveller can go for miles, just knowing there's dwarf bread in their pack. A traveller can think of just about anything to eat rather than dwarf bread including their own foot and even pumpkins"
- throwanem 9y agoVery much like. I want to say I recall somewhere seeing an interview or similar in which Pratchett mentioned fruitcake as an inspiration for his dwarf bread, but I can't find a cite for that, so may misremember.
- AaronM 9y agoThe wiki says its a take on food like hardtack, but given the description fruit cake might fit
- ypxz 9y ago“So we settled down, and now my dad’s got a chain of bakeries in Bugarup.” “Dwarf bread?” said Rincewind. “Too right! That’s what kept us going across thousands of miles of shark-infested ocean,” said Mad. “If we hadn’t had that sack of dwarf bread we’d—” “—never have been able to club the sharks to death?” said Rincewind. “Ah, you’re a man who knows your breads.”
- vidarh 9y ago"Forged" is clearly the right word.
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- michelb 9y agoJust as well-conserved as the Huntley & Palmers website: http://www.huntleyandpalmers.org.uk/ixbin/hixclient.exe?a=file&p=huntley&f=huntley.htm http://www.huntleyandpalmers.org.uk/ixbin/hixclient.exe?a=fi...
- zerr 9y agoI wonder what's that hixclient.exe
- GFischer 9y agoProbably some awful CGI VB6 or C app. I've had to maintain some of those. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Gateway_Interface https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Gateway_Interface
- _joel 9y agoStill seems to be rendering, despite an HN effect. I wonder if they have an active web admin (doubtful) and if they're wondering why traffic has gone through the roof
- michelb 9y agoCorrect, it seems to be something like http://www.ssl.co.uk/indexplus http://www.ssl.co.uk/indexplus Removing the parameters in the url gives a descriptive error page. (Error from Index+ Web Server (hixclient.exe) I've found many museum sites running this.
- scruple 9y ago> awful CGI VB6 or C app. I'm starting to have flashbacks to the various C web CGI applications that I used to develop and maintain now... Awful is not the descriptor that I'd have used. These things were abominations, more so by todays "standards." I don't remember all of the details, but I do distinctly remember that user input was an absolute nightmare to deal with, as well as sending/receiving files. Another nightmarish memory from those days: I once had a co-worker develop the backend to a web CGI in bash (!) and, before I knew he had done it, he was kicking it over the wall for me to finish. I ended up demonstrating why this would cause poor performance and then re-wrote it as C. Yikes. I'm really glad that we've moved beyond all of... that.
- warvair 9y agoAmazing that after all this time it remains inedible.
- SwellJoe 9y agoI don't understand why everyone doesn't love fruit cake. Maybe most people have only ever had crappy cheap grocery store fruit cakes? Fruit cake is literally one of my favorite foods, and I don't really feel like I have esoteric taste in the general case.
- vidarh 9y agoFor my part I've never understood why people want fruit in cakes at all. I live in the UK where it is a national obsession to put fruit in cakes. I'm used to much more extensive use of cremes (egg, vanilla, regular), possibly combined with berries in Norway, but not nearly as often with fruit (we do get some, especially apple pies, but I at least perceive the selection as much more varied, where it's often a challenge to avoid pastry where the filling isn't meat or minced fruit in British bakeries... (don't get me started on how limited British bakeries are - the only saving grace is a slow increase in French and Eastern European patisseries)
- hanoz 9y ago>For my part I've never understood why people want fruit in cakes at all. How do you think your patisserie's finest extensive use of cremes cake would look after 100 years in a hut?
- vidarh 9y agoOur patisseries finest cakes would have been eaten, rather than left behind, as they actually taste good enough to be something you want to consume.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
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- obilgic 9y agoWhy does it come in a metal box?
- dsfyu404ed 9y agoYou don't just wrap a cake in a bag, toss it in the bottom of a ship and expect it to be in good condition when it arrives on the other side of the world. Metal and wooden crates/boxes did the same job then as cardboard boxes do now.
- vidarh 9y agoWell, clearly they should have made the box from fruit cake rather than metal, since the cake looks to be in better shape (no, I'm not entirely serious)
- wsgeek 9y agoApparently nobody liked Fruitcake 100 years ago either
- mixmastamyk 9y agoI once visited a whaling station down there and it was quite cool to see all the "steampunk" tech laying around, though rusting. Also there was a British (I think) outpost that had canned food on the shelves from the late 1950s, was a bit surreal.
- DannyB2 9y agoIt's just as good as any fruitcake passed around at Christmas. It never gets opened. It stays perfectly preserved. When you receive the fruitcake at Christmas, you leave it wrapped, and gift it to someone else next Christmas. Only a finite number of fruitcakes need be manufactured. Thus resources are conserved. Only a finite number of fruitcakes ever had to be purchased. Again, resources and economics. It's economical because when you receive the fruitcake as a gift, you have a free gift to give someone next year without spending money. It can be passed around almost indefinitely Best if used by August 9, 2047.
- zzalpha 9y agoI wonder if it goes down to the level of physics. I posit a fundamental Law of The Conservation of Fruitcakes. Specifically, of a fruitcake is destroyed another one is created, and vice versa. This also means that the universe was created with a fixed number of fruitcakes...
- CharlesW 9y ago"If you wish to make a fruitcake from scratch, you must first invent the universe?"
- maxerickson 9y agoAnd then you still accidentally find one someone left lying around.
- frandroid 9y agoNext up, create a fruitcake-based ICO: fruitcoin.
- jononor 9y agoA cryptocurrency backed by fruitcakes? Or maybe proof-of-work via fruitcake production
- david-cako 9y ago
- dzaragozar 9y agoHahaha I read the title with fruitcake as the slang for lunatic: really old lunatic found in Antarctica's oldest building :)
- werdnapk 9y agoWhere is this considered slang for lunatic? I've only heard this as slang for homosexual.
- dzaragozar 9y agohttp://www.dictionary.com/browse/fruitcake http://www.dictionary.com/browse/fruitcake Second meaning
- grogenaut 9y agoHeard it all the time in Missouri growing up.
- hanoz 9y agoIt's common in Britain. As far as I know the thinking is: nut (head) => nut case / nuts / nutty etc. => "nuttier than a fruitcake" => fruitcake.
- civilian 9y agoYou might listen to the song "Fruitcakes" by Jimmy Buffett, he plays with this pun. :]
- y-haminator 9y agoThey should send a piece of it to steve mre
- Sleeep 9y agoJay Leno ate some of a 125 year old fruitcake on his show in 2003 - http://www.cbsnews.com/news/maybe-he-shouldve-let-it-breathe/ http://www.cbsnews.com/news/maybe-he-shouldve-let-it-breathe...
- yellowapple 9y agoI'm pretty sure that's normal for fruitcake.
- Taniwha 9y agoI've always been amused by Americans' hate relationship with fruitcake, all I can assume is that they've never ever had good fruitcake
- notadoc 9y agoDoes fruit cake get better with a century of age or is it still terrible?