LHSA's Twelve Days of Christmas

Welcome to LHSA’s twelve days of Christmas.

In the countdown to this year’s festive season we’ll be bringing you a new blog post each working day until the 21st, showcasing items from the collections, our core services and some of our activities this year, all with the twelve days of Christmas in mind (although we have taken a few liberties with the original lyrics!).

On the first day of Christmas my true love sent to me…one invalid fruit tart.

This year, a recipe for invalid fruit tart from LHSA’s Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh collection was a surprise TV and Twitter star. After featuring in the Scottish Council on Archives’ 2011 archives awareness raising campaign 'The Edible Archive', it caught the eye of a BBC production team and was included in ‘The Great British Bake Off’ in August. ‘Invalid fruit tart’ trended on Twitter the evening the show was aired, we saw a spike in visitors to the LHSA website in the days that followed, and we hope to include it in the University’s ‘Masterpieces III’ exhibition in early 2013.

We were delighted that the tart’s success meant that we were able to raise our profile and widen our audience, and having tasted the tart at an ‘Edible Archive’ event last year, we can confirm it is as delicious as it is popular!

For more information about the recipe and the collection it belongs to please see http://www.lhsa.lib.ed.ac.uk/home/TheGreatBritishBakeOff.htm and the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh catalogue.


To enlarge the image please click on it, and for more recipes from the Royal Infirmary please click here.