Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff from How Stuff Works. Hey, brain Stuff,
Speaker 1: it's Christian Sager here. The lonely fruitcake, rich and candied fruit,
Speaker 1: nuts and spices, and heavy with Roman brandy, has become
Speaker 1: a much maligned confection that doubles as a punch line.
Speaker 1: But hey, the joke may be on us. While we
Speaker 1: succumb to rising seas, roaming zombies, or warring dictators, the
Speaker 1: lowly fruitcake hunkers down for survival. Fruitcakes may outlast us
Speaker 1: all case in point, a one hundred and six year
Speaker 1: old fruitcake, still in its original tin, has been discovered
Speaker 1: at the Cape a Deer outpost in Victoria Land, East Antarctica,
Speaker 1: and according to conservationists, it's almost edible. Stored properly, a
Speaker 1: fruitcake can easily aged to thirty years and still be eaten.
Speaker 1: But more than a century the aged fruit cake, found
Speaker 1: wrapped in a wax paper inside a ten spent the
Speaker 1: majority of the nineteen hundreds in a long abandoned research station.
Speaker 1: It dates back to the Terra Nova Antarctic expedition, which
Speaker 1: was conducted from nineteen ten to nineteen thirteen. Robert Falcon Scott,
Speaker 1: a British explorer who led the mission listed the food
Speaker 1: stuff among the camp's inventory. A New Zealand based team
Speaker 1: from the Antarctic Heritage Trust recovered the fruit cake and
Speaker 1: about fifteen hundred other artifacts from historic huts at Cape
Speaker 1: a Deer. The huts, which were the first ever built
Speaker 1: on Antarctica, were fashioned in eighteen ninety nine by Carston
Speaker 1: Borch Grivink, a Norwegian explorer, and used again in nineteen
Speaker 1: eleven by Captain Scott and other members of his expedition,
Speaker 1: two months after the team launched the foray to the
Speaker 1: geographic South Pole. Scott and his team finally achieved their
Speaker 1: goal on January seventeenth, nineteen twelve, only to discover a
Speaker 1: Norwegian flag. It had been planted and left by explorer
Speaker 1: roled Emunson, who had become the first human to reach
Speaker 1: it thirty three days Prior blizzards delayed their return, and
Speaker 1: Scott and his team died at the end of March
Speaker 1: in nineteen twelve. Their bodies and diaries were found eight
Speaker 1: months later, and the huts they once occupied have become
Speaker 1: a historic monument. The conservationist team that recovered the Scott
Speaker 1: artifacts began working on the site in May of twenty sixteen.
Speaker 1: Other items, including meat, fish and canned jams. Hmmm, did
Speaker 1: not fare as well as that fruitcake. In a statement,
Speaker 1: Lizzie Meek, the Trust's program manager for Artifacts, wrote that
Speaker 1: there was a very slight rancid butter smell to it,
Speaker 1: but other than that the cake looked and smelled edible.
Speaker 1: She had no doubt that the extreme cold and antarctica
Speaker 1: had assisted the preservation. At a specialized lab in the
Speaker 1: Canterbury Museum in christ Church, New Zealand, the fruit cakes
Speaker 1: container will undergo rust removal, chemical stabilization and a repair
Speaker 1: of the wax paper covering the fruit cake. The cake, however,
Speaker 1: will be left to its own devices. After proper restoration,
Speaker 1: the fruit cake will be returned to the hut where
Speaker 1: it was found in the Antarctic, which is now part
Speaker 1: of an Antarctic Specially Protected Area. Today's episode was written
Speaker 1: by Laurie L. Dove, produced by Dylan Fagan, and for
Speaker 1: more on this and other topics, please visit us at
Speaker 1: how stuff Works dot com.