Every blue moon I resolve to do something about the terrible state of my cooking.

The three dishes I can make without tears offer a snapshot of the 1980s, before fusion let alone fennel had entered my lexicon. The spur to try again, fail again, and fail better is usually an hour spent with a good cookery book. Until now, I've hoped to master savoury dishes to widen my repertoire, but last week a copy of Teatime In Paris! by Jill Colonna (Waverley Books, £14.99) arrived, and set me thinking that I am far too Presbyterian when it comes to patisserie, and need to loosen up.

Full of excellent intentions, I settled down to learn how to make a macaron. These elegant treats are the epitome of sugary chic, but this most encouraging of writers tells us that everything in her Parisian book of delights can be made by anyone who can bake a scone. Last time I did that I was still at school, but I don't recall any disasters, so I read on. It seemed perfectly straightforward until reaching the caveat that the making of a macaron demands the use of electronic scales. The precision weighing sounds a little like something from a chemist's lab, and since I have broken two sets of digital scales (they don't float), and now use the kind with lead weights that Mrs Beeton would recognise, this ruled out macarons. One by one, the rest of Colonna's recipes fell by the wayside, less for their difficulty than because they ask for basic equipment that any self-respecting baker would own (piping bag and nozzles, oven thermometer), but which for me would require emptying the shelves at Lakeland. No matter, I was hooked, and kept reading.

Part of the charm of this companionable book is its setting. A long-time resident of Paris, Colonna takes us around the city, sharing the history of various cafes and patisseries where her cakes started life, sometimes centuries ago. The afternoon was thus spent as sweetly as if stuffing my face with éclairs.

Some of the best cooks I know are avid readers of cookery books. Some of the worst, too. I read them for comfort and hope. A Nigel Slater recipe is as nourishing as poem, if you're in the right mood. Those of us brought up to believe that the words Scottish and cuisine could never be seen together will enjoy the new edition next month of Marion F McNeill's classic, The Scots Kitchen (Birlinn, £14.99). Readers of this bible might want to rush out to make haggis with a sheep's stomach and heart, or Hodgils, the borders version of dumplings (made with beef fat, the better to fill you), but for most of us its appeal lies in what it says about the country's past, its larder and cooks' ingenuity. As McNeill writes, "the pageant of Scottish history is shadowed in the kitchen". Would that some of our leaders had been as inventive and resilient as those who devised these recipes.

It was the New York trencherman AJ Liebling's opinion that to write well about food you need a good appetite. "Each day," he wrote, "brings only two opportunities for field work, and they are not to be wasted minimizing the intake of cholesterol." But fascination with food and its origins is surely as important as an elastic waistband. Among the best food writers who were interested in food but could never be called gluttons is MFK Fisher, whose essay on how quickly adults forget the hunger pangs of youth is a lesson in remembering that your guests might have much larger appetites that you. Perhaps unsurprisingly, many novelists and poets are devoted to their kitchens. This can't just be because they are confined to home for great parts of the day. No doubt for them, as for professional culinary artistes, cooking is merely an extension of the creative instinct, but one whose gratification is instant.