A good cookbook deserves to spend more time in the kitchen than on the coffee table. With so many recipes available online, it is easy to collect cookbooks for inspiration while repeatedly cooking the same familiar dishes.

One way to use them more is to choose a book and cook one new recipe from it each week. It can be something as simple as a salad, pasta sauce or cake rather than a recipe that requires an entire afternoon.

Cookbooks are also useful for planning around seasonal ingredients. When tomatoes, courgettes or grapes are abundant, looking through the index can reveal several ways to use the same ingredient instead of buying something completely different for every meal.

Books connected to particular countries and regions have another advantage. They provide context around ingredients, techniques and food traditions that individual recipes found online can sometimes miss. A Provençal cookbook, for example, can become especially relevant after a visit to a local market.

Over time, favourite recipes can be marked and returned to, while notes in the margins record small changes that worked particularly well. The book gradually becomes part of the way you cook rather than simply a collection of recipes.

And when travelling, a cookbook from a local chef, restaurant or region can be a useful souvenir: something that brings the flavours of a destination back into your own kitchen.

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