Gastronomy and motion are not good mixers, but we do it because it’s there, it passes the time, and, in the case of planes, because it’s free. The luxury cruise puts itself in a different class of eating on the go. Water, moonlight, dinner, candles and music theoretically create a heady, romantic, effect. Sweet chestnut makes a slow smoky fire; the wood is too sappy Fig wood is poor, Tamarisk has an unpleasant smell. Olive wood makes the most incandescent braise, and ilex is nearly as good.

The most fragrant fires are made from dried Mediterranean mountain scrub and the withered shrubs of the maquis – cistus, rosemary, Jerusalem sage, lentisk – which burn with the violence of a blow-torch, produce spurts of blue and emerald fire, and a smell of incense.”In fact, I’m due to read it a third time. Her cooking has none of the cultish voyeurism linked to the fashion for peasant cookery. Instead, it’s written by someone who lived the life and understood its cycle – the rhythm of planting and harvesting, olive picking and wine-making.On the subject of fire, Gray writes: “Apple, pear, plum, apricot woods have fragrance So do pine branches and nut woods. And there is a lesser-known tome that also deserves to be up there with the greats – Honey from a Weed: fasting and feasting in Tuscany, Catalonia, the Cyclades and Apulia, by Patience Gray (Prospect Books, pounds 12.99).I think this is the only cookery book I have ever read cover-to-cover twice in succession. It’s exquisitely written, set against the extraordinary background of the author’s life with a sculptor who set down roots beside the marble quarries of the Mediterranean. A thirsty, experimental cook like Alastair Little says he cut his teeth on Mastering the Art of French Cooking Volumes I and II, by Simone Beck, Louisette Bertholle and Julia Child.

And being an eclectic soul, he reels off an erudite list of titles that go to form the make-up of his cooking: one for every country or cuisine.Such specialised titles form a second strand: Elizabeth David on French cookery, Jane Grigson on fruit and vegetables, Alan Davidson on fish, Yan-Kit So on Chinese cookery, Claudia Roden on Middle Eastern, and so on across the globe. An adventurous cook, though, is unlikely to want it handed them on a plate, and might instead consult several different sources before devising their own version of a dish. She goes virtually unchallenged as the modern day equivalent to Beeton, Acton or Connie Spry, with Prue Leith and Caroline Waldegrave coming a close second with Leith’s Cookery Bible.These are hand-holding bibles. A blockbusting success when first published, it sold two million copies in 14 countries.