There are so many cookery books these days it's hard to know which to choose. A York writer and cookery expert leads CHARLES HUTCHINSON through the culinary minefield.

NEVER mind too many cooks spoiling the broth, the new danger is too many cookbooks cluttering the shelves.

York author and food historian Laura Mason has contributed her fourth book to that stack this year, Farmhouse Cookery published by the National Trust, but please do not point an accusing finger in her direction.

Indeed Laura can lighten the load by pointing you in the right direction in Feast of Words, her menu of prose and poetry on a food theme on Thursday evening at City Screen.

In this revue-style show, she will present snippets from a wide range of writers while also discussing the problems and delights of writing cookery books, from initial research to testing the recipes (in her case with friends and neighbours in The Groves).

"Sometimes I feel guilty about adding to the cookery-book mountain at Borders, but if you're going to do something like this, you have to make it a bit different. My curiosity won't just let me stop at doing a recipe; I want to know why people eat what they eat; why fat is so attractive; why we eat too much sugar; how come certain things achieve prominence, whether they are McDonalds or sun-dried tomatoes," says Laura.

She was attracted to cookery writing by a number of factors. "One of the reasons I liked it is that it's a portable career: that meant I could do it wherever I wanted to.

"Also, I've always loved food and eating, and a long time ago I cooked for a living for a while, though that doesn't mean you're necessarily going to write about it."

The love of cookery books was born out a gift to her in her teens. "Somebody gave me one of Elizabeth David's books when I was 17/18 - Spices, Salt And Aromatics In The English Kitchen - and it was more than a cookbook. It was a travelogue, a history, a romance," she says.

"Someone once called her the Jane Austen of the kitchen, and she made me want to cook. I cooked and cooked from that book, and bought her other books too, and I loved her style. It seemed so effortless though in fact it was polished and polished again, and the little details she threw in were wonderful. It was like reading a novel."

For a long time, she saw Elizabeth David as the pinnacle of cookery writing. "I am not so sure now; there are other people whose work has been important to me, such as M F K Mary Frances Kennedy Fisher. She had a similar sort of stature to Elizabeth David in the US; she was writing at the same time but with much more human interaction, and again she wrote wonderful prose," says Laura.

Jane Grigson was an inspiration too - "she wasn't frightened to tackle English food, which is still the case for some people" and Laura's writing mentor was Alan Davidson, who was best known for editing that monumental volume, The Oxford Companion To Food (a work whose initial deadline of two and a half years was stretched eventually to 20).

"Alan was the only one of those four writers that I ever met and I knew him well for the last 12-13 years of his life; he was always very encouraging, putting work my way and commissioning me to write for the Oxford Companion,"

Laura, a devotee of the Slow Food form of cooking, is not a fan of celebrity chefs and their knock-on books. "I have never bought a Jamie Oliver book, never cooked from one, never felt he had anything to say to me," she says. "I do find the TV chef phenomenon rather sad; it's like a virtual world, where you experience everything only through the telly."

What will sustain a cookery book's popularity beyond initial fads? "It has to be beautifully written; that would be top of my list. Cookery books in this country go back to the 17th century, and my favourites are the ones that have something about the writing," she says.

"Social documentation would be the second factor. A good cookery book tells you something about the person or the milieu they're working in, or something about the country they're from or what's it's like to be in the kitchen, or the effect food has on people."

The third factor is "good recipes, great recipes, not photography".

"Nigel Slater has no photographs in his paperbacks but they're great recipes," she says.

"He is very hands on and unassuming; he's not complicated or threatening; put it in a tin and if it looks ready, take it out. He's obviously aware of the importance of friends and conviviality with food, and his cooking is very good- natured and full of good flavours - though not necessarily very English. You won't find too much lemongrass in the English countryside!"

Are there too many cookbooks coming on to the market, Laura? "Maybe it's not that there are too many; it is just that certain ones have the weight of large companies behind them, so they get more shop shelf space than they deserve," she says, adding words of advice on how to gut a kitchen over-stuffed with books.

"The perfect collection would be the books you like, the books you use, so if any have sat on the shelf for years and you've never looked at them, it's time to get rid."

Updated: 08:50 Tuesday, September 20, 2005