Tinned fruit cocktail (in juice)

How long it keeps

About 12 months unopened

Once opened, about 2 days, refrigerated.

Source (unopened): FoodKeeper (USDA), 373 Canned goods, high acid (such as juices, fruit, pickles, sauerkraut, tomato soup, and foods in vinegar-based sauce), 12–18 Months · https://catalog.data.gov/dataset/fsis-foodkeeper-data

Source (once opened): https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/how-to-chill-freeze-and-defrost-food-safely/how-to-chill-freeze-and-defrost-food-safely

What ends it. The food and the tin slowly react. That changes taste and texture rather than making it unsafe. How to make it last longer

Tinned fruit cocktail

Unfashionable and genuinely useful: several fruits in one tin, already prepared, and sweet enough to make a pudding out of very little. Buy it in juice rather than syrup. It tastes more of fruit, and the juice is worth keeping.

The two recipes here use it as it is. Fruit cocktail with condensed milk takes two tins and no cooking, and custard and fruit cocktail pudding turns it into a proper pudding on one burner.

How long does fruit cocktail last?

Unopened: USDA FoodKeeper gives high-acid tins, fruit included, 12 to 18 months. That is shorter than tinned beans or meat, so these belong near the front of the cupboard and should be eaten in rotation.

Opened: do not keep it in the tin. The Food Standards Agency advises against storing food in an opened can (FSA). Decant it into a covered container, refrigerate it, and eat it within two days. Without a fridge, open a tin only when it will be finished.

What it gives you

Per 100 g with its juice, CoFID records 45 kcal and 14 mg of vitamin C. Vitamin C is the nutrient a long-life diet is most likely to run short of, which makes tinned fruit more useful than it looks. See vitamins and a long-life diet.

Storage

Cool, dark. Unfashionable and genuinely useful: several fruits, one tin, no preparation.

The pack

Typical UK size: 410 g
Weight packed: 458 g
Volume: 480 ml

Computed from net weight and standard pack geometry, not weighed. Manufacturers publish net weight and nobody publishes packed weight or displaced volume, so this is an estimate and is labelled as one.

Per 100 g

Deliberately narrow. These are the five things a long-life diet actually gets wrong, plus energy and protein. It is not a general nutrition model and is not meant to be.

Energy: 45 kcal
Protein: 0.4 g
Fibre: not measured
Vitamin C: 14 mg
Vitamin A: 9 µg
Omega-3: not measured
Sodium: 3 mg

Source: CoFID 2021: 14-336 Fruit cocktail, canned in juice, whole contents