Four hundred pages from a butcher who also runs a kitchen, and the combination is the whole value. Peter Sanagan starts where the confusion actually starts: what the animal is, how it breaks down, which cut is which, what your butcher can do for you if you know how to ask.

Then more than one hundred and twenty recipes across beef, pork, lamb, poultry and game, with the technique explained rather than assumed. Dry heat and wet heat, resting, curing, sausage, offal, stock. By the end you are not following recipes so much as deciding what to do with what is in front of you, which is the point of a book this size.

Joe Beef called it the most comprehensive book on meat and cooking yet written. If someone in your house owns a smoker, a cast iron pan and strong opinions, this is the gift.