Before modern storage methods, harsh weather that wasn’t conducive to hunting and gathering meant a lot of people starved to death. Greenland’s solution to this was kiviaq, a food that doesn’t spoil for up to a year, even when left outside. This stinky dish is made by stuffing a seal carcass with sea birds—as many as 400 birds—and then sewing up the seal’s skin and storing the carcass underneath rocks. The birds melt into a paste but don’t go bad.
How do you feed soldiers who are away from camp for days or weeks at a time? Freeze-dried food. But soldiers don’t want freeze-dried food; they want a good old-fashioned sandwich. A normal sandwich, however, quickly becomes stale and soggy. Enter battle butties, the sandwiches that last up to two years. Their creators are working on making an immortal peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
Another culinary invention for the military, hardtack goes way back in history. It’s is a cracker made of water, flour and salt, purposely made dry as possible so it will last. There are several variations of it, but hardtack has been filling the stomachs of soldiers and sailors for hundreds of years. It’s never eaten alone though, but dunked into coffee, water or whiskey.
Rumor has it some rations first made during World War II were consumed 75 years later, and it’s been proven that some rations lasted 35 years. But the most impressive (or alarming) item is cake. U.S. Army Col. Henry Moak held onto a piece of pound cake given to him during the Vietnam War, and famously pledged that on the day of his retirement he would eat it. He kept his word, eating a 40-year-old piece of cake in 2009. He claimed it tasted fine.
When you think canned protein, you may think tuna, sardines and spam but probably not chicken. Well, when Les and Beryl Lailey married in 1956, they received a can of chicken as a wedding gift, and Les promised to eat it on their 50th wedding anniversary. The marriage made it to 50 years and Les had to eat the chicken. He said he experienced no symptoms or illness from it.
Lard (animal fat) isn’t around much since people became aware of something called cholesterol, but in 1948, German food expert Hans Feldmeier received a can of lard as part of a care package to Germany from the U.S. Feldmeier tucked the can away for an emergency. None came up, and 64 years later, to prove his argument that canned foods don’t go bad, the food expert ate the lard.
Since fruit can be dried and preserved indefinitely, when a fruitcake is made correctly, scientists say it could last indefinitely. In 1878, Videlia Bates baked a fruitcake for Thanksgiving but she died right before the feast. Her family covered the cake in plastic and held on to it. In 2003 Bates’ grandson sent the cake to Jay Leno who took a bite of it on TV, apparently experiencing no illness from it.
We know wine gets better with age but just how much age? In 2010, Finnish divers decided to find out. They found 200-year-old bottles of beer and champagne in a wreck in the Baltic Sea and researchers declared the booze safe for consumption, even drinking it themselves. Champagne experts claim that the bottom of the sea is a better place to store the bubbly drink than the finest wine cellar above.
The Smithsonian Institution tells us that honey can last for millennia because of its acidity and because it contains little moisture. Scientists have even found perfectly edible honey in the tombs of 5,000-year-old mummies.
Mammoth remains have been uncovered with plenty of meat still attached to their bones. Since the bodies were under permafrost, the flesh was mostly preserved. Legend has it that hungry, lost explorers ate off the mammoth corpses. But there are also confirmed cases, such as the one about researchers who ate meat off a 36,000-year-old bison corpse.
