In 1900, after years of persuasion, the Russian Academy of Sciences finally agreed to sponsor Toll’s expedition to find…

In 1900, after years of persuasion, the Russian Academy of Sciences finally agreed to sponsor Toll’s expedition to find Sannikov. Aboard the ship Zarya, Toll set sail into the Arctic. But from the start, the expedition was buffeted by trouble: navigational confusion, coal shortages, scurvy, a power struggle between Toll and the captain, the death of the doctor, erratic winds, flooded decks, brutal snowstorms, starving sled dogs, and a raging polar bear. Worst of all was the constant threat of encroaching ice, which could entrap the ship and constrict around its wooden hull like a vise.

Toll had buried [a food store] on the Taimyr Peninsula in September 1900, early in his voyage. First, he described its location: a spot five meters above sea level, marked with a wooden cross. Then he described the hole itself, dug deep through thawed clay, peat, and ice. And finally, the contents: “a box with 48 cans of cabbage soup, a sealed tin box with 15 pounds of rye rusks [dry biscuits], a sealed tin box with 15 pounds of oatmeal, a soldered box containing about four pounds of sugar, 10 pounds of chocolate, seven plates and one brick of tea.”

[In 1973 Dmitry Shparo and the Scientific-Sport Expedition] team extracted an unmarked metal cube and left behind a wooden box, marked “Cabbage soup, 48 cans.” Then, they refilled the hole, marked its spot, and as soon as they could, returned to base camp with a surprise treat for the other two teams: Toll’s 73-year-old rye biscuits. “They were very tasty!” Shparo recalls, 46 years later.

Inspired by the Toll depot discovery, permafrost food-storage experiments continued on the Taimyr Peninsula for the next 45 years. According to Vladimir Ledenev, head of the All-Russian Research Institute of Food Biotechnology, the point of the research is not to observe what stays the same during long-term permafrost storage, but to understand what changes. And the findings have been surprising. Prolonged freezing causes black and green tea leaves to form tiny cracks, improving its flavor. Over time, frozen vodka becomes “soft,” and tastes better as well. A vast array of foods, as well as seeds and fuel ingredients, have been subject to long-term study in the permafrost, with researchers exhaustively documenting changes in chemistry, physical properties, and quality.

The next summer, the state media and the Soviet Ministry of the Food Industry sponsored a larger expedition to return to the site of the cache. There, they retrieved 34 cans of cabbage soup and left 14 behind. They slated three to be retrieved for research in 1980, 2020, and 2050, respectively, and the remainder to stay buried indefinitely. What’s more, the team buried several containers of modern food for study by future generations.

(via https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/what-did-arctic-explorers-eat )