Hall of Fame Award | 2015

Murray was an accomplished cookbook writer, media personality, and teacher. Her appreciation for food was influenced by her upbringing on a farm near Duntroon, Ontario. Murray earned a bachelor’s degree in English from the University of Toronto and went on to learn cooking at several prestigious culinary institutes in Paris. She wrote thirteen cookbooks and contributed to many others. An honourary lifetime member of the Culinary Historians of Canada, Murray won numerous awards for her cookbooks, known for their decipherable recipes and use of fresh, local ingredients. In 2011, Murray donated her personal papers to Archival & Special Collections (XM1 MS A125), which includes published and unpublished materials related to her life and career. This case features the first edition of Murray’s The Christmas Cookbook and a page from the book’s manuscript. Her first cookbook, it speaks to Murray’s lifelong love of entertaining and incorporates the extensive research she completed on the Christmas traditions of British and French immigrants living in Canada. Alongside the cookbook, which is opened to recipes from her chapter on breads, is a page from an early typescript and handwritten draft of the book that shows how Murray developed her recipes for quick breads.