Scott’s Antarctic cake is found... and it’s edible!

A PERFECTLY preserved fruitcake taken to Antarctica by team members in Captain Scott’s expedition 106 years ago has been found near the South Pole.

Baked by former Reading-based biscuit makers Huntley & Palmer, it was on a shelf in a remote hut at Cape Adare, still wrapped in paper and inside a tin.

Remarkably, said researchers from New Zealand charity the Antarctic Heritage Trust, it looked and smelled good enough to eat.

It would have been an ‘ideal highenergy food for Antarctic conditions’, said Lizzie Meek, a manager from the charity. ‘With just two weeks to go on the conservation of the Cape Adare artefacts, finding such a perfectly preserved fruitcake in among the last handful of unidentified and severely corroded tins was quite a surprise.’

The cake was left at the cape by members of Scott’s Northern Party who conducted geological research and spent the winter of 1911 there.

Scott and his team died on their return from the South Pole in March 1912.