MREInfo.com

Today I bring you another brown-bag review, this time a 1991 DoP Spaghetti with Meat Sauce, which was menu 5 that year. This older MRE was part of a lot that I picked up on eBay not too long ago, and the exterior looked to be in very good condition, so I was hopeful as to the condition of the components.
I was excited to find a maple nut cake inside!
I went ahead and heated the entree using the BIB method for 10 min and got everything plated in fine dining fashion
The spaghetti was perfectly fine and tasted brand new. The noodles were a bit soggy, but what can you do when you've been sitting in tomato sauce for 25 years. There was a decent portion of beef in the sauce, and was quite good.
The crackers were crisp and tasted as good as new. A little saltier than later production MRE crackers. The cheese spread hadn't aged quite as well. There wasn't a "bad" odor upon opening, but it was certainly darker than newer production cheese spread, and the texture had changed a bit. While not "bad", the smell was without a doubt different than when it was new. It had an "aged" smell, not unlike Parmesan cheese. I decided to forgo the cheese spread. I've got a little sinus infection as it is, and I don't have any desire to add any GI symptoms to the mix as well
The maple nut cake, I am happy to say, was perfectly fine! I was a bit surprised, I had fully expected the nuts to have gone rancid, but amazingly it tasted brand new!
The M&M's were all intact, and tasted new as well. They hadn't turned to powder like the older ones sometimes do in less-than-ideal storage conditions.
The coffee was Taster's Choice, and tasted just fine. The grounds were a little more brown than black, but the finished product smelled and tasted great. The lemon-lime beverage powder was still nice and "powdery", and mixed up into a beverage that tasted just like new.
The wet wipe was still moist, and the gum tasted just as new, and left the same awful after taste that it always does While I didn't use the creamer (I like my coffee black), the creamer seemed to be in fine shape and was still in powder form and hadn't clumped or hardened. The same for the sugar, it appeared perfectly fine.

I was really impressed how well this one held up over the past 25 years. This seems like one that ended up stowed away in a dark, cool basement, forgotten for a couple of decades. Other than the cheese spread, everything was great! Thanks for reading!

Oh wow - looks like that one was in some great storage conditions for most of the last 25 years. Those M&Ms are picture-perfect, and it's always nice to see an edible nut cake. I can't imagine the cheese ever holding up that long no matter what the conditions. At that point it's probably just better that it didn't leak on anything, right?

Great vintage MRE review - thanks a ton for sharing!

Great review! That spaghetti and maple nut cake still look good!

awesome review...wow, something even more rare than FD fruit....A cake that's still good. You hit the jackpot.

I always liked the maple nut cake. I do miss them a bit.

Great review and very detailed description of all the items down to the wet wipes
Spaghetti the classic MRE and MCI. I like it
I too like the maple nut cake, it's great with coffee
The cheese spread looks like refried beans.
What color was the cheese when it was new?

Great review and I´m happy they were still OK even after 25 years. That cheese looked like cement to me

housil wrote:Great review and I´m happy they were still OK even after 25 years. That cheese looked like cement to me

Thanks housil! It was certainly not the same texture as when fresh, for sure! It was still soft, but very granulated and "clumpy". Not smooth like it is when newer.

Norton wrote:What color was the cheese when it was new?

If I remember correctly, the color of the cheese spread was usually just a bit darker than the crackers when it was pretty new. Age and heat stress tends to darken it.

rabidwolf wrote:I always liked the maple nut cake. I do miss them a bit.

I agree, for years I've been wishing the nut cakes would make a comeback, especially the cherry and maple.

elandil wrote:A cake that's still good. You hit the jackpot

Indeed, and I took my time and enjoyed every bite of it too!

kman wrote:Great review! That spaghetti and maple nut cake still look good!

Thanks kman! Indeed, it's amazing how well some of these rations can hold up over time.

Ruleryak wrote: I can't imagine the cheese ever holding up that long no matter what the conditions. At that point it's probably just better that it didn't leak on anything, right?

Haha, yes! I have a hard time imagining any dairy item holding up in non-refrigerated storage for years, let alone decades! It was interesting that the cheese spread packaging seemed to be de-laminating a little bit, which I've seen before in other older cheese spread pouches. It was still intact, but it kind of makes you wonder what may specifically cause this in the cheese spreads, and what the consequences might be in terms of shelf life.

Back when I was in, this was one of my favorite MREs. We used to trade to get the maple but cake. The cheese definetly did not look like that back in the day. Thanks for posting this very awesome review. You brought back some good memories.

I'm surprised that maple nut cake was still fine. I've seen Steve suffer through rancid nuts in his reviews enough times to just expect brown bag MRE nut cakes to be rancid.