The world’s oldest edible ham has turned 112-years-old

A cured ham in the United States celebrated its 112^th birthday this week, making it potentially the oldest cured ham in the world. First cured by the Gwaltney meat company in 1902 and then forgotten about at the back of a storage room, the ham was donated to and is still in the possession of the Isle of Wight County Museum in Smithfield, Virginia. The ham has a special casing that protects it from mold and bugs. The process of dry curing involves salting the meat and draining the blood which makes the ham last a long time. In theory, the 112-year-old ham is still edible. No one has been brave enough to put that theory to the test though.

“After such a long time and without knowing how the ham was processed it’s difficult to know whether it would be safe,” a Food Standards Agency spokesman says. Even if you can eat it without throwing up, that doesn’t mean it won’t kill you. Jose Pizarro, owner of Pizarro, a Spanish restaurant in London, says that the oldest ham he’s ever heard of being eaten was only 8-years-old, not nearly as old as the Gwaltney ham. He claims that a rancid taste develops as the yellow fat diffuses, and as the decades pass it will become as hard as a stone and incredibly ugly.

While the Gwaltney ham is the oldest proven ham in the world, there is another one at a butcher shop in the United Kingdom that claims to be older. Michael Feller, the owner of the butcher shop, bought what was claimed to be a 101-year-old ham back in 1993. He said that the ham looked pretty disgusting but was still edible, although he wasn’t brave enough to try it himself. Food writer Jay Rayner is unmoved by the battle for the title of oldest ham. “I’d be suspicious of anyone getting excited about the former back end of a pig that’s been hanging around for 112 years”. Read more about the story here.