Books to delight cooks on your holiday gift list

A gift from the kitchen is so often a gift from the heart. We cook for those we love, sometimes saying more through the roast goose or potato latkes than we can ever express aloud. For those on your holiday gift list who wear their hearts on their aprons, those who love nothing more than getting into the kitchen and mixing batter or tackling a new lamb chop recipe, nothing says thank you like a new glorious cookbook, one that will inspire and challenge and teach. For them — and for you — we have sifted through the annual year-end deluge of new cookbooks to come up with our 10 favorites.

"GOURMET TODAY." edited by Ruth Reichl, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $40

Gourmet magazine is no more, but this hefty volume is a fitting au revoir from the magazine as well as a travel companion for those headed into the kitchen for the first (or 500th) time. That's because Reichl and her team approached the book with the understanding that, she writes: "You aren't eating the way you used to. None of us are." So among the more than 1,000 recipes — from simple (roasted asparagus with feta) to involved (pork belly buns, opera cake) — are sidebars coaching on "sea vegetables" (aka seaweeds), offering a "beef buyer's guide" and defining "softened butter." Techniques and resources round out the book. So does the recipe for Elvis Presley's favorite pound cake.

"MASTERING THE ART OF CHINESE COOKING," by Eileen Yin-Fei Lo, Chronicle, $50

Yin-Fei Lo sees herself as an educator above all else. Consider this 384-page book to be an accessible if exacting tutorial on how to cook Chinese food. Her book is divided not into chapters but lessons. She wants you to absorb her traditional teachings in a certain sequence. She starts off with the simpler dishes and more familiar ingredients and grows increasingly more sophisticated. Yin-Fei Lo has no hesitation about dropping a topic or a food — rice, say — only to come back around to it later with more challenging presentations. Large, colorful photographs underscore the teaching. This is one cookbook you are meant to read — and use — from beginning to end.

"ROSE'S HEAVENLY CAKES," by Rose Levy Beranbaum, Wiley, $39.95