7 new cookbooks for winter cooking projects and edible solace

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The big-deal holidays have come, celebrated and gone. You will still need to cook over the coming winter months, even if the season of high partygoing has ended. If you need a project, one author will teach how to candy every fruit possible. If you need comfort of both the edible and literary kind, a couple of these releases will satiate.

'Nature's Candy: Timeless and Inventive Recipes for Creating and Baking with Candied Fruit' by Camilla Wynne

Jams and jellies get much of the love when it comes to preserving fruit. Candied fruit are a comparatively unsung arm of sweet transformations. In what might be the first cookbook on the subject, Camilla Wynne convinces would-be candy-ers why taking the time to cajole pears, pineapple and even jalapeños to sweeten themselves and lengthen their stay in the kitchen is an exercise in assured pleasure. (Out now, $30, Amazon)

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'Home Food: 100 Recipes to Comfort and Connect' by Olia Hercules

"Hercules again proves herself to be one of the great narrative recipe writers," said Publishers Weekly, with this new book that dissects and celebrates comfort cooking. In different hands, the recipes might be a mere collection of one family's recipe archives. Hercules instead wanders countries, sharing tales of migration through a rice casserole from her Uzbeki neighbors or her own personal dishes and stories from her birth in Ukraine, through time spent in Cyprus, Italy, and now the United Kingdom. (Out now, $26.95, Amazon)

'Sift: The Elements of Great Baking' by Nicola Lamb

Nicola Lamb, author of the great Substack Kitchen Projects, is a born teacher and a deftly trained pastry chef. With her debut cookbook, "Sift," she walks readers through the core ingredients of baking: flour; sugar; eggs; fat. She then leads home bakers through recipes that are either quick, no more than a day or a longer project. One fine example: Tiramichoux, a towering pyramid of stuffed cream puffs, with flavors modeled on, yes, tiramisu. (out now, $37, Amazon)

'Cold Kitchen: A Year of Culinary Journeys' by Caroline Eden

The newest book from Caroline Eden is, said The Times Literary Supplement, "a hybrid work, part recipe book, part memoir, part travelogue." It revolves around 12 recipes, each of which are a launching pad for Eden's mesmerizing considerations about travel and home. (Jan. 14, $28, Amazon)

'My (Half) Latinx Kitchen: Half Recipes, Half Stories, All Latin American' by Kiera Wright-Ruiz

A rangy collection of personal history and recipes from Kiera Wright-Ruiz's multi-Latinx background, "this heartfelt cookbook will inspire home chefs of any ethnic background," said Publisher's Weekly. Ecuador, her family's homeland, is present, as is Cuba, courtesy of her Cuban foster parents. This is cooking and storytelling that unveil how country and lineage commingle. (Feb. 11, $35, Amazon)

'Preserving the Japanese Way: Traditions of Salting, Fermenting, and Pickling for the Modern Kitchen' by Nancy Singleton Hachisu

This sublime tome was first published in 2012 in the States, and its fans bemoaned it going out of print some time later. Well, Nancy Singleton Hachisu's book is about to be available to the masses again, in no small measure thanks to the growing interest in Japanese foodways at both restaurants and homes in the U.S. Part travelogue; part anthropological study; part cookbook: "Preserving the Japanese Way' is a singular work. (Feb. 25, $45, Amazon)

'Mother Sauce: Italian American Family Recipes and the Story of the Women Who Created Them' by Lucinda Scala Quinn

Italian wedding soup; chicken Parmesan; tiramisu: Iconic Italian American dishes that are so well-known, they seem to have always existed. Lucinda Scala Quinn, the longtime food overlord of Martha Stewart Living OmniMedia, has reverse-engineered those storied dishes, unearthing the women who invented the versions now known across much of the States. Buried history, rebirthed, plus an array of solid recipes. (March 11, $35, Amazon)