A gift of canned fruit may seem ridiculous these days, but it was well received in a Britain still struggling from food shortages after World War II.

A Buckingham Palace spokeswoman said the tins were to be distributed "as the Princess Elizabeth desires".

“Food wasn't common as a gift and this most probably was one of the largest in volume,” she said.

According to a November 1947 edition of Australian Women's Weekly, the cans had "special gift labels".

Trudy Bennett from the Heritage Collections department at the State Library of Queensland said the idea would have been to help post-war families in the United Kingdom.