Fare Exchange Revisited [9781771515061]

Overview

A Canadian culinary classic shaped by multicultural food traditions, now curated and reimagined for a new generation.

First published in 1963, Fare Exchange brought together more than 1,100 recipes in a remarkable 776-page volume, reflecting Dorothy Allen-Gray’s belief that food could build bridges between cultures, communities, and generations. Featuring soups and beverages (mainly homemade), dumplings and pasta, casseroles and risottos, meat and venison mains, finger food and fish (with a note or two on snails and frogs’ legs), cakes and pies, and much more, the truly global collection left nothing out.

A pioneering food writer, educator, and longtime food editor for The Globe and Mail, Dorothy played a formative role in shaping Canada’s culinary identity at a time when the country’s cultural fabric was rapidly evolving. Deeply committed to welcoming newcomers and captivated by the techniques and traditions they brought to Canada, she helped introduce readers to a wider world of flavours, establishing Fare Exchange as one of the most ambitious Canadian cookbooks of its era.

More than sixty years later, Dorothy’s great-nephew, Kevin Allen, and prominent food writer Julie Van Rosendaal revisit this landmark cookbook to reintroduce it to today’s cohort of cooks and connoisseurs. A carefully curated selection of Dorothy’s most enduring recipes along with rare archival photographs, personal correspondence, and stories that illuminate the woman behind the recipes offer an intimate portrait of a passionate home cook and community builder whose influence extended far beyond the kitchen.

Part cookbook, part culinary history, and part family tribute, Fare Exchange: Revisited is rich in nostalgia yet remains relevant to contemporary readers in a land shaped by over a century of immigration, cultural exchange, and shared food customs.