It was the height of post-war luxury: a hamper crammed with delicacies, topped by a whole roast chicken preserved in its own jelly, and sealed in a tin.

The year was 1956 and the hamper was bought by Les and Beryl Lailey for the guests at their wedding reception. By the end of the day, they had polished off the sandwiches, the hams, the cheeses, and the luxury shortbread biscuits.

All that was left, resplendent in its Buxted packaging, was the chicken.

And it remained untouched for 50 years until, finally, Mr. Lailey, 73, plucked up the courage to eat it on the couple’s golden wedding anniversary.

“It was really quite tasty,” he said yesterday at his home in Denton, near Manchester. “Maybe a bit salty, but then I didn’t follow the instructions to the letter.”

Perhaps distracted by a crowd of disbelieving relatives, Mr. Lailey, a one-time corporal in the Argyll and Southern Highlanders, had omitted to heat his 50-year-old skinless chicken in the oven for the 10-15 minutes the instructions advised. “I just broke off a leg, smelled it, drained the jelly off it and then bit into it. The flesh was white with a few pinky bits.

“Our grandchildren were appalled, begging me not to eat any more, but I knew that if it smelled okay, it wouldn’t do me any harm.”

Mrs. Lailey, 70, a retired machinist, declined to taste the 3-pound chicken on the ground that she was recovering from flu.

Her husband, who recalls buying the couple’s wedding day cream cakes “on tick,” said he had intended to open the tinned chicken in celebration of the birth of his first child, Lesley, now 49.

Lesley and her brothers, Kevin and Ivor, three and six years her junior, all remember a childhood punctuated by “threats” from their father that he would take the chicken out from its cupboard in the kitchen.

The tin, produced before “use by” dates were invented, disappeared briefly when the Laileys moved house 18 months ago. But then, to his relief and his family’s consternation, Mr. Lailey found it behind some beans.

“Over the years I’ve always said I’d eat it, mostly to prove a point about it being okay.”

Mr. Lailey now hopes to sell the empty tin on eBay.

Canned meat typically carries a “use by” date that allows storage of five years. The canning process occurs at temperatures of 120C upwards and is designed to kill a cause of botulism, clostridium botulinum.

“If the canning is done properly, all the microbes that cause food to deteriorate are removed, so the food could last for ever,” Professor John Mitchell of Nottingham University said.

The representative body for manufacturers, Canned Food UK, also said canned food can be preserved “indefinitely,” as long as there were no dents to the tin. “There is no risk that the food is unsuitable for consumption after the sell-by date as long as the container is intact,” the organization’s chairman, Steve Thomas, said.

“A can was recovered 10 years ago from Captain Scott’s travels to Antarctica, and it was still deemed safe.”