WingNews logo WingNews GitHub [2]
top | item 14987262

100-year old fruit cake found in Antarctica's oldest building

125 points| kensai | 8 years ago |nzaht.org | reply

88 comments

order
[+] leephillips|8 years ago|reply
Amusing 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|8 years ago|reply
Even the microbes don't want it.
[+] warvair|8 years ago|reply
Amazing that after all this time it remains inedible.
[+] SwellJoe|8 years ago|reply
I 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.

[+] nsxwolf|8 years ago|reply
I'm glad someone made a classic fruit cake joke. I haven't heard one in many years. I haven't seen a fruit cake in many years, either.

Jokes about fruit cakes used to be common. I fear the jokes were too successful and killed off the fruit cake.

I love fruit cake. I wish someone would give me a fruit cake as a gift they way we used to get them when I was a kid.

[+] jackfoxy|8 years ago|reply
Pro tip: fruitcakes are meant to be doused in in alcohol, usually brandy, rum, or whiskey. That makes them edible.
[+] DannyB2|8 years ago|reply
It'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|8 years ago|reply
I 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...

[+] frandroid|8 years ago|reply
Next up, create a fruitcake-based ICO: fruitcoin.
[+] david-cako|8 years ago|reply
We just have to make sure there's no blockchain forks that devalue existing fruitcake.
[+] aunty_helen|8 years ago|reply
The 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

[+] throwanem|8 years ago|reply
Still 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|8 years ago|reply
Much 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"

[+] vidarh|8 years ago|reply
"Forged" is clearly the right word.
[+] gideonparanoid|8 years ago|reply
My 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|8 years ago|reply
We found 30+ year expired food in my mother's pantry not long ago. I doubt that's particularly rare in the West.
[+] dlhavema|8 years ago|reply
When i cleaned out an apartment in 2003 i found a pickle jar that didnt have nutrition information included in the still fully readable label. Those have been required in the US for decades...
[+] arethuza|8 years ago|reply
It 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|8 years ago|reply
I wonder how many of them were regifted and just passed around for ages.
[+] grondilu|8 years ago|reply
It looks better than some of the stuff in my fridge.
[+] dzaragozar|8 years ago|reply
Hahaha I read the title with fruitcake as the slang for lunatic: really old lunatic found in Antarctica's oldest building :)
[+] werdnapk|8 years ago|reply
Where is this considered slang for lunatic? I've only heard this as slang for homosexual.
[+] mixmastamyk|8 years ago|reply
I 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.

[+] Taniwha|8 years ago|reply
I've always been amused by Americans' hate relationship with fruitcake, all I can assume is that they've never ever had good fruitcake
[+] y-haminator|8 years ago|reply
They should send a piece of it to steve mre
[+] notadoc|8 years ago|reply
Does fruit cake get better with a century of age or is it still terrible?
[+] yellowapple|8 years ago|reply
I'm pretty sure that's normal for fruitcake.
[+] wsgeek|8 years ago|reply
Apparently nobody liked Fruitcake 100 years ago either
[+] obilgic|8 years ago|reply
Why does it come in a metal box?
[+] dsfyu404ed|8 years ago|reply
You 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.