Both the chicken books are terrific, by the way. You might ask whether we should be cooking and eating so much chicken, given the horrors of intensively reared poultry. But since, vegetarians aside, we seem wedded to our chicken habit, we might as well buy the best we can and cook it better – and these books help. If you start with a whole bird and want to know how to extract every ounce of schmaltzy goodness, you may choose Phipps – a wise and practical companion. Henry, on the other hand, excels on flavours. Dull thighs and breasts are transformed into a miraculously flavoursome Persian stew; or a rich French braise with prunes and red wine; or a springlike broth with tarragon.
This chicken trend comes in a food-book market that is increasingly polarised. Most cookbooks now are promising either health or comfort. On the comfort side are the baking books. With their consoling rivers of ganache, they have an air of childish innocence. Obesity crisis? What crisis? My favourite of 2015 is Honey & Co: The Baking Book (Saltyard) by Itamar Srulovich and Sarit Packer. Honey & Co cakes – from blueberry, hazelnut and ricotta to courgette and golden raisin – are not light on sugar, but to my mind they taste better than anyone else’s.
If you are more interested in why we eat so many cakes than in actually baking them, you might prefer The Oxford Companion to Sugar and Sweets (Oxford). A superb encyclopedia with nearly 600 entries, edited by food historian Darra Goldstein, it covers everything from Viennese cafes to gummy sweets, from Krispy Kreme doughnuts to the slave trade and sugar addiction. One of the recurring themes is that the drive for sugar has been one of the main motivating forces in human existence.
Someone who feels we are too hung up on sweetness is Jennifer McLagan. Her Bitter (Jacqui Small) is a delightful and wholly original celebration of bitter foods, with recipes: from chicory to coffee to Seville oranges to dark greens. McLagan argues that as well as adding complex notes to our meals, bitter flavours can have health benefits. “Without bitterness, we lose a way to balance sweetness.”
This is a more pragmatic approach to nutrition than “clean eating”, a bizarre vogue that shows no sign of abating. It boils down to this: eat raw vegan food and you will be able to master incredibly bendy yoga moves and look like a model. According to Nielsen Book Services, no fewer than 208 of the 1,808 food and drink titles published in the UK in 2014 were on health, dieting and wholefoods. Many of these books – virtuous with spiralised vegetables – promote a guilt-inducing view of food.
Anna Jones is a benign exception. She is a rare author who can write recipes for quinoa “goodness bowls” without making you wish you were eating doughnuts. Her A Modern Way to Cook (4th Estate), a collection of vibrant vegetarian recipes, is already one of the most loved and splattered books in my kitchen (parsnip rosti, sweetcorn fritters, butternut and sweet leek hash). As Jones comments, “wellness doesn’t come at the expense of deliciousness”.
Nigella Lawson would share this view. Her latest, Simply Nigella (Chatto & Windus), may sound like Deliciously Ella, but it begins with a welcome polemic against “clean eating”. “Food is not dirty,” she notes, “the pleasures of the flesh are essential to life and, however we eat, we are not guaranteed immortality or immunity from loss.” Lawson brings together the warring factions of comfort and health. She has embraced chia seeds and avocado toast – the book is worth buying for the toasty olive oil granola alone – but still gives us the hearty stews and cakes we know and love her for. If bundt tins sell out, we’ll know why.
Away from the clamour of “wellness”, many cooks and chefs continue to produce excellent books on the dishes they love most. Given how many superb books Nigel Slater has already written, it feels ridiculous to recommend another, but his A Year of Good Eating (4th Estate), in a sky-blue cover, is simply a joy. He packs more careful culinary observation on to a page than most authors manage in a whole book. A case in point: his sublime tempura recipe.
Another volume of understated pleasure is Kristen Miglore’s Food52 Genius Recipes (Ten Speed Press). Miglore has gathered cult recipes – such as Daniel Patterson’s eggs scrambled in water – and explained why they are so brilliant. You feel you are in the company of an inquiring kitchen mind. The same is true of Nopi: The Cookbook (Ebury) by Yotam Ottolenghi and Ramael Scully. It may not be Ottolenghi’s easiest book, but it is the most elegant, spiced with pink peppercorns and black garlic. Seven years after his first cookbook, his recipes remain the most exciting around. Who else would think to roast a whole celeriac for three hours “like a creature from outer space”?
Cookbooks allow us to travel – if not as far as space, at least to other countries. The Nordic Cookbook (Phaidon) by the Swedish chef Magnus Nilsson is a magnificent achievement. I sometimes get impatient with these vast cheffy books, too big to read in bed, but in this case the size is justified. Like Claudia Roden, Nilsson is interested in the subtle variations of home cooking – Scandinavian classics, from waffles to pickled herrings. The recipes are hearty and unpretentious (try the potato patties!), though you’ll probably want to skip the section on puffin cuisine.
Meanwhile, in Mamushka (Mitchell Beazley), the best food debut of the year, Olia Hercules takes us to her home country of Ukraine which, she points out, is not “grey and bleak”, as westerners imagine, but a sunny place an hour’s flight from Turkey. I fell for Hercules’s warm reminiscences and her recipes – for yoghurt drop scones, Armenian roast vegetables and garlicky Georgian poussins cooked in a skillet weighted down with a mortar. Mamushka offers the rare feeling that, amid this Babel of recipes, there is still something new to discover.
• Consider the Fork: A History of How We Cook and Eat by Bee Wilson is published by Penguin. Save at least 30%. Browse all the critics’ choices at bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0330 333 6846. From now until Christmas, 20p from each title you order will go to the Guardian and Observer charity appeal 2015.
