Two hundred soups, filed the way you actually cook: by season first, then by the ingredient sitting on your counter. Parsnip and apple or French onion when it is cold. Chilled cucumber with dill when it is not. Borscht when the weather turns and you want the kitchen to smell like it.

This is DK doing what DK does: every recipe photographed, laid out so you can follow it from across the counter, and annotated with freezing times so a Sunday afternoon becomes four weeknight dinners. Contributors include Raymond Blanc, Dan Barber and Alice Waters, and the edition opens with a foreword from The Soil Association.

Three hundred and fifty two pages in paperback, thick enough to be the only soup book you own and forgiving enough to hand to someone still learning to cook. It is the book that turns a bag of vegetables into dinner without a recipe hunt.