How old is the oldest item in your store cupboard?

[Delphiniumandlupins]

Following on from a thread about mustard powder, what's the oldest product in your store cupboard? I regard BBE dates as advisory, rather than a rule (obviously Use By are stricter).

It used to be traditional to keep the top tier of a wedding cake for the first christening (when everybody had fruit cakes) so mine had new marzipan and icing 10 years later.

I don’t know for sure, but I suspect it’s the jar of Christmas mincemeat that’s dated BBE Nov-24, and which I fully intend to use. I’ll open it, and if it smells fine, that’s good enough for me.

Spices. Always bloody part-used spices - ashamed to say that I threw some away recently that were over a decade old. There’s no excuse for this level of shoddy kitchen management!

I recently threw out some puff pastry that was lurking in my freezer. The date was 2013.

I have some very old custard powder. - 2022 It's fine.

I use out of date spices in the garden to repel pests - including local cats.

Yeah - I know without looking that some of the spices I have will be years old!

Almond flavouring dated 1996. It’s prior to being married and older than my PFB.

Probably my tin of Coleman's mustard powder, but I am carrying on a family tradition as my parents had a tin of the same, which they had had since they were married, so at least 10 to 12 years old and was als
ways referred to as the mustard powder dad and mum had when they first got married. The married in 1957 and I think it got used up in the late 60s or early 70s, which is interesting because it was used regularly.

Yep, that stuff really lasts because you never use much at a time.

That's impressive. Were you tempted to use it? I've moved house twice in the last 15 years so the freezer has been emptied.

I recently found a box of corn starch from three years ago

Sorry, I don't think anything post-Covid counts as "really old".

Half of it had been used so the packet was opened.
I put it in my food waste caddy, and it felt exactly the same (rock hard) the next day 😅

I get through a couple of packs of mustard powder a year!
anyway. Probably tinned fish. There’s a rusty looking tin of something that we’ll be glad if in the zombie apocalypse

I have a jar of red pepper flakes which were given to me by a famoly friend when she moved back to the States in 1990. Still edible if not as spicy as they once were.

I have a jar of Vicks which dates from the late 90s, and yesterday my mother treated an insect bite with Afterbite which expired in 2002.

It was Granny, but we've let her out for a bit because it was getting a bit 'wiffy' in there. 🥴

A jar of mustard seeds BBE 10/2013. I used about half a teaspoon in some spicy chutneys, but I haven’t made any chutney for a few years. It’ll be fine.

I only recently threw out what was left in a bottle of yellow food colouring with a BBE of 2001 IIRC, the last year I made, iced and decorated a birthday cake for my youngest.

I've got a glass jar of Vick in its original box with the price marked in shillings.

Bonus points for keeping half a packet of frozen pastry.

I did defrost my freezer last year, and for some reason decided to keep it.

I used some Safeway whole cloves in an apple crumble yesterday, seemed to do the job. Morrisons took over Safeway in 2004, but my local one had closed long before that. The plastic tub still has the price sticker on it 35P, and is 1/3 full.

I’m moving and went through the cupboards, found something from 2017. I’ve binned so much!

I have special dark cocoa powder that's probably 10 years old and food colouring that's at least ten years old, if not more.

I found a box of mixed wild rice and basmati tucked out of sight, best before date of 2014, a few months ago.

It was delicious.

I can beat that. A friend went back to Australia when she finished her Ph.D., probably around 1984. I still have her jar of cloves, also from Safeway I think, but sadly not with its price label. I use them for bread sauce every Christmas. Mulled wine too. Indestructible.

sudocrem that has an exp of 1987