As the world teetered on the edge of utter chaos last week, I found myself worrying mainly about food. As usual. Clearly there would be less of it after an apocalypse. And it's a fair bet that the quality will take a dip. Cormac McCarthy's grim, beautiful novel The Road is set a few years after a disaster has cloaked the world in cloud. Nothing can grow. So the survivors' prime urge is to find the last things left to eat.

There's a barbecue scene that you won't want to hear about. But the happiest moment has the main characters, a father and son, exploring an abandoned house. In a hidden cellar they find hundreds of cans of food and other stores stashed by the long-departed owners. What more glorious treasure could there be? Except I know that I'd be fussing among the tins of tomatoes looking for some good-quality purée, too. And how about anchovies?

My wife has lived in places where the supermarkets don't always open according to plan. So she went to Asda last week, and now a wall of our small cellar is stacked high with flour, sugar, coffee, pasta, tinned tuna, chocolate digestives and other staples. Which was either panic-buying or very wise, depending on your faith in Alistair Darling and Henry Paulson. I feel good that there are enough tea bags down there to last us nearly a year. And she left a tiny space for the things I want: the unneccessities.

And so came about the game Armageddon Cupboard. Name five food items that you don't exactly need, but really could not do without. That you would like for, say, your first dinner party after Doomsday.

I polled lots of people. Chocolate and wine, they all said. Some choices were very pragmatic: yeast, bicarbonate of soda, rennet, bottled lemon juice, Tabasco, cooking oil, soy sauce, vinegar, salt, stock cubes, sodium nitrate for curing meat. Others were more exotic. The “eat, drink and be merry” sort wanted: gherkins, butter beans, mustard, balsamic, foie gras, smoked oysters, pancetta, fish sauce, truffle oil, preserved garlic, harissa paste, an entire Parmesan, posh cocoa, dried porcini, Stolichnaya, Guinness and Pepto-Bismol.

It's harder than Desert Island Discs. A basic spice collection would have to include black pepper, dried chillis, cinnamon, saffron, cumin and coriander seeds, just to start with. Gordon Ramsay's store-cupboard essentials, I read, include juniper berries, star anise and the oils of olive, groundnut, hazelnut and sesame - but what he “really couldn't do without” is ketchup and Worcestershire sauce. I would add sun-dried tomatoes, Spanish smoked paprika and Marmite. And a bottle of whisky.

But then, of course, you wonder how much pleasure the exotica would give. Crouched in your dark cellar, licking truffle oil off half a mouldy potato - you could get a bit glum as the heady scent summoned up great Tuscan lunches, never to be eaten again. After playing Armageddon Cupboard the other night, one friend went to the shops and bought crucial supplies for the two things she really loves: inner tubes for her bike and cans of meat for her dog.

I remembered Edward Evans, writing in South with Scott, his account of travelling in the Antarctic before the First World War, of the joy of simple treats after living on seal blubber. Each of the expedition members got a birthday present of 25 raisins. Christmas dinner, 1911, en route to the South Pole, was a stew of pony meat, raisins, cocoa, butter, ginger and biscuits. “It was up to our wildest expectations,” wrote Evans. “After the meal we gasped, we felt so comfortable.”

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