Also, some of the recipes have been insufficiently anglicised.
Chocolate: The Definitive Guide by Sara Jayne-Stanes (Grub Street, £20) is precisely what it claims. Sautéed rocket, garlic and anchovies on polenta sounds like a stunning starter. One warning: you need to be in striking distance of a good ethnic grocer for many ingredients. But vegetables do get star billing, in particular Swiss chard (the Med’s most popular vegetable, says Wolfert) and polenta.

Despite its title, the book is far from being solely vegetarian, with recipes ranging from black rice with mussels (the blackness comes not from squid ink but an onion and chilli “jam”) to “lamb stew smothered with cactus”. We don’t really need to know that Aicha Rouatri is “a smiling, sunny Tunisian widow with a well-lined face”, but her recipe for semolina bread sounds excellent. My salivary juices started oozing at the prospect of ajo blanco (“a luxurious, creamy soup” based on ground almonds) and a broth of hot spicy chicken with guacamole.
Don’t be put off by the gabby American text of Mediterranean Grains and Greens (Kyle Cathie, £25) by Paula Wolfert. In the slightly alarming pictures, squid tentacles curl from a creamy bowlful, and a lobster waves its claws from a mess of black-eyed beans. From the founders of the hyper-trendy Soup Works, it is as much an ardent polemic for liquid food as a cook book, though authors are pushing their luck when they start a history of the topic with a reference to “primordial soup”.
Snaffled from all over the globe, their concoctions are tantalisingly exotic. Soup by Nick Sandler and Johnny Acton (Kyle Cathie, £16.99) will certainly join these well-thumbed favourites.

However, the recipes ­ parsley soup with morels, a salad of warm smoked eel with crisp pancetta ­ are exemplary in their detail.
In a kitchen overflowing with superfluous food books, the only ones I find myself repeatedly using are those devoted to soup. But why is slow-baked duck leg with onion marmalade appropriate for spring or a salad of mussels with samphire for autumn?
Similarly, the profusion of menu suggestions seems misplaced. Also from Clarissa is the unimaginatively titled anthology Food (Ebury Press, £25). A scissors-and-paste job, it is fine in its way, with Alice B Toklas on hash cakes and Evelyn Waugh on cannibalism, but you’d be better off lashing out the extra 15 quid on Davidson.
As you would expect, Sally Clarke’s Book (Macmillan, £25) by the celebrated restaurateur, stresses the importance of sourcing the finest ingredients (a lesson she learned at Alice Waters’s legendary Chez Panisse in California) Hence the division of the recipes into seasonal sections. Though it will probably mean divorce, I intend trying tripe a la Madrilena (“the Spanish do wonderful things with tripe”).

Do not follow his over-egged Yorkshire pudding recipe, which has to be turned over half-way through. If you’re tempted by his seared scallops, ignore his instructions and heat the pan before adding the oil, otherwise they won’t sear on a domestic range.
A much more coherent approach is evident in Two Fat Ladies: Obsessions (Ebury Press, £19.99), the final joint offering from Clarissa Dickson Wright and Jennifer Paterson (we’re told the latter died “peaceful, painlessly and full of caviar”). Chapters are dedicated to 18 robust ingredients, such as anchovies, offal, oysters (“like kissing a mermaid”), eels, snails and, inevitably, beef on the bone. The contradictory characters of Gary and Rhodes emerge in this 400-page compendium, which oscillates between fine but challenging dishes like pigs’ trotters Bourguignon and depressingly patronising recipes for fig rolls and, God help us, sardines on toast.
For all his double-yolked ego, Rhodes is not infallible.

The trouble with Mr Greasy-Quiff is that he is two people: the preening, vainglorious telly-cook who fancies himself as having the common touch, and the top-flight chef-patron with a chain of upmarket eateries. All are authoritative, many wonderfully recondite and quite a few hugely amusing. Twenty years in the making, this titanic achievement is a great big raspberry in response to the prejudice that the British are indifferent to food.

However, the top-seller in this year’s tidal bore of food books will probably be New British Classics by Gary Rhodes (BBC, £20). From Aardvark (“commonly described as tasting like pork”), via Elevenses, Grigson and Shipworm (“may be pickled in vinegar or fried and eaten with eggs”), to Zucchini, it contains over 2,600 entries. It is simply indispensable, not so much in the kitchen (Davidson imposed a strict rule against recipes) but for feeding the mind. Twenty years in the making, this titanic achievement is a great big raspberry in response to the prejudice that the British are indifferent to food.