Mummified Cake

Last year, archaeologists unearthed what appeared to be a black rock from a dig site in Lübeck, Germany. On closer inspection, they realized the strange rock was actually a 79-year-old cake!

In 1942, during World War II, Lübeck was bombed by the British Royal Air Force. Today, scientists are excavating, or digging up, parts of the city to find remains from that period. So far, the researchers have discovered more than
4 million artifacts, or human-made objects. Last year, the team began investigating an area that had once been the basement of a house. On the night of the bombing, the house was destroyed and collapsed. Extreme heat from the fiery explosions transformed a cake inside the house into a burnt lump.

When food catches fire, it undergoes a chemical reaction called combustion. Ingredients such as sugars and proteins burn away. If the fire burns hot and long enough, all that’s left is a black residue made up of the element carbon.

It’s still possible to see icing swirls on top of the cake, the remains of a hazelnut and walnut filling and remnants of the wax paper it was wrapped in. It’s rare for archaeologists to find such well-preserved food. Still, it’s far from edible. “It would probably taste like the leftover charcoal from last night’s barbecue,” says Dirk Rieger, head of archaeology for Lübeck’s Historic Monuments Protection Authority.