AN ANTARCTIC FRUITCAKE SURVIVES 106 YEAR FREEZE
I’ve spoken about Borchgrevink’s Hut before (see https://bit.ly/2DiErVV). It is the only original building still surviving on any continent.
Built by the 1898-1900 British Antarctic Expedition led by Carsten Borchgrevink, it provided shelter for the first team to overwinter in Antarctica. Situated at Cape Adare it was also used by Robert Falcon Scott in 1911 during his Terra Nova Expedition.
I’m not a fan of cake myself but it seems Captain Scott was particularly fond of fruitcake, especially that of the British biscuit company, Huntley & Palmers (founded in 1822 and still with us today).
In 2017 conservators from New Zealand’s Antarctic Heritage Trust found some of this fruitcake at the hut at Cape Adare. Found in a rusted tin, the cake itself was said to be in “excellent condition” and smelled edible except for a slight smell of rancid butter.
You probably know that fruitcake was very popular in England at the time of Scott’s adventures and is still, if not a staple in the British diet, at least popular, especially with a cup of tea.
When you consider that outdoor work in Antarctica requires around 5000 calories a day and manhauling (pulling sledges by human power alone) can use somewhere between 6,000 and 11,000 calories per day, fruitcake, with its high calories, loaded with fat and sugar, is the type of food you might crave in the harshness and cold of Antarctica.
Fruitcake was something of a treat and would be served on special occasions after meals during the long Antarctic winter and at other times. It is known to stay fresh for a very long time, but 106 years is pretty impressive even if you consider that Antarctica is like a giant fridge.
Food was an important component of Antarctic expeditions. Sledging rations tended to be simple, pemmican, biscuits, sugar, cocoa, butter and tea so whenever there was an occasion to vary the diet back at the hut it was always a memorable event.
Captain Scott wrote about their 1911 Midwinter feast in Antarctica:
‘Beginning on seal soup, by common consent the best decoction that our cook produces, we went on to roast beef with Yorkshire pudding, fried potatoes and Brussels sprouts. Then followed a flaming plum-pudding and excellent mince pies, and thereafter a dainty savoury of anchovy and cod’s roe. A wondrous attractive meal even in so far as judged by our simple lights, but with its garnishments a positive feast, for withal the table was strewn with dishes of burnt almonds, crystallised fruits, chocolates and such toothsome kickshaws, whilst the unstinted supply of champagne which accompanied the courses was succeeded by a noble array of liqueur bottles from which choice could be made in the drinking of toasts’.
The fruitcake find was one of nearly 1,500 artifacts that were collected at the Cape Adare site. Other foods, tools and clothing were also found in the hut and once they were restored they were returned to their original resting place.
Unfortunately, despite the masses of food that Scott’s expedition carried to Antarctica they underestimated their requirements to get to the Pole. The lack of food plus the combination of bad weather and poor snow conditions for sledge hauling, resulted in the death of Scott and his four companions.
Kind of sweet though that a fruitcake survived.