Hush now, don’t tell anyone, but cookbooks are the best Christmas presents you can give. Novels and celebrity autobiographies are passé. For a start, your nan has already been gifted three copies of the latest Richard Osman. But also, if you’re anything like me, you’re going to come out the other side of December with at least seven new books. That’s a lot of reading! A big time commitment! But a cookbook doesn’t really ask for much more time from the reader than they were already going to spend thinking about and cooking the meals they need to eat every day.
Also: cookbooks are beautiful! It costs a huge amount of money to pull together the design and photography for a cookbook, and as a result publishers work really hard to deliver something worthy of the expenditure. When you open a novel on Christmas day, you aren’t flicking through 300 pages of prose for the rest of the afternoon. But a cookbook? When everybody else is lost in a drab post-dinner conversation about local council spending or what Aunt Susan’s XL bully did to next doors’ toddler, you can tuck yourself away in lush pictures of delicious looking meals. Meals that you will now be able to make yourself someday.
So that’s settled. You can do your friends and family no better favour than buying them a cookbook this Christmas. And luckily, here I am with an extensive list of what to buy everyone in your life. At least, if you’re a paid subscriber. I’m going to be a bit of a Scrooge and cut the rest of you off after my first suggestion. Though, frankly, that first suggestion is for my favourite book of all time, so you’ll only need more ideas if everybody you know already has:
THE ALL-ROUNDER: The Flavour Thesaurus / The Flavour Thesaurus: More Flavours
When I tell you that The Flavour Thesaurus is my favourite book of all time, I’m not being hyperbolic. Niki Segnit’s first book, an instant classic when it was first released in 2010, takes food writing to another level. Impeccably researched, Segnit pairs 99 common flavours together, saving us all the fuss of working out which ingredients will best complement whatever we’re cooking.
I love that Segnit is as happy to regale readers with personal anecdotes as she is with the science behind flavour. Her writing is at turns precise, playful and rich with nostalgia.
For years I have been giving The Flavour Thesaurus out as a gift for loved ones. Recently I’ve had to stop - partly because I started to forget who I’d already given it to, and partly because it has become so ubiquitous that I can’t be sure they won’t already have a copy. Well, this year has offered me new opportunities: Segnit returned with a sequel.
More Flavours is the perfect option for vegan and vegetarian friends, taking the initial concept down a determinedly plant-based route. This means it can occasionally feel like it underperforms from an omnivore’s perspective - I’d love more insight into how the new flavours would pair with different meats. But it’s still a welcome return, recapturing much of the original’s charm, and will sit pretty next to its partner on any shelf.
See also: Fried Eggs and Rioja: What to Drink with Absolutely Everything by Victoria Moore
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