112-Year-Old Ham Makes Us Wonder: What's the Oldest Food Out There?

Photo credit: Isle of Wight County Museum

In case you were wondering, this is what a 112-year-old ham looks like. Leathery, desiccated, and wholly unappetizing.

The ham, which was first cured in 1902, was found years ago in the back storage room of the Virginia-based Gwaltney foods company. It was later donated to the Isle of Wight County Museum in Smithfield, Virginia, where it remains today in a special case that keeps mold and bugs at bay. The museum even threw a 112th birthday shindig in its honor this past Saturday.

The stuff is edible, the Wall Street Journal reports, but whether it’s palatable is another question. And that led us to yet another question: What other foods are edible after long aging periods?

Thousand-Year-Old Eggs: Thousand-year-old eggs aren’t actually aged for a thousand years. (Womp, womp.) But they are cured with mud, ash, and lye for several months. That’s why the egg whites turn a translucent brown and the yolks a murky shade of yellow-green-blue. Yum.

Cheddar: Most cheddars found at the supermarket are aged only a few months, but others are aged for upwards of a decade, during which time their rich, nutty flavors grow increasingly sharp. The most extreme example might be this 40-year-old block of cheese, which sat forgotten in a walk-in-cooler for generations. Amazingly, it was still edible: The outer portions of the cheese were reportedly crunchy, but within it was creamy and overwhelmingly sharp.

Steak: The dry-aging process usually invovles 28 days of hanging meat in climate-controlled rooms. Some outfits like to push the envelop, though: Eleven Madison Park in New York City, for example, dries its rib eye for an astounding 140 days. “The meat has an indelible flavor,” wrote Francis Lam in Bon Appétit. “It plays hide-and-seek–here a flash of woody musk, there a hum of sweetness, and then: cheese, ripe cheese.”

Coffee Beans: Aging coffee beans “emphasizes body and decreases acidity to near zero,” writes Corby Kummer in The Joy of Coffee. “Nothing is as soft as a good aged coffee.” Some, like the oak barrel-aged Sumatra beans from the coffee company Water Avenue, are aged for six months.

Tea: Not all teas are appropriate for aging, “but some oolongs, black and Pu-erh teas can age magnificently,” reads The Tea Enthusiast’s Handbook, which describes the flavor of these aged teas as “mellow,” “rounded,” and “deepened into something rich and expansive.”Red Blossom sell teas that are more than 40 years old, like an “Aged Wenshan Baozhong" made from leaves picked in 1973 in modern-day Taiwan.

Balsamic Vinegar: True balsamic vinegar must be aged for a minimum of 12 years, but several vinegars on the market are much older. Take, for example, this balsamic vinegar aged for at least a century from the online vendor Worlds Foods.

Soy Sauce: All soy sauce, a byproduct of fermented soybeans and wheat mixed with brine, is aged for at least six months, but there are one-year-old soy sauces on the market. Five-year-old soy sauces. Even some that have been aged for 20 years. The manufacturers claim that the long aging process lends their products a distinct, complex flavor. And they charge accordingly—the 20-year-old bottle sells for more than $100.