However, New Zealand-born British food writer and television presenter Glynn Christian's latest book, How to Cook Without Recipes (Portico, hbk, $35) is sure to inspire confidence.
Author of Real Flavours, a handbook of gourmet and deli ingredients (2006) and the founder of a London deli, he was one of the first food writers, back in the 1970s, to emphasise that knowledge of ingredients is more important than recipes.
Here he continues following that track with his explanation of three "flavour trails" or ways of creating recipes.
First is the single ingredient, where you emphasise a flavour by using it in different ways, such as orange juice, orange flower water and Cointreau in, say, a cheesecake.
Then there's the affinity trail using certain ingredients known to go well together, such as basil and tomato, or walnuts and tomato, or coriander and cumin.
You will come across many others if you give a moment's attention to what you eat.
Thirdly there's the more complicated bridging flavour trails where the flavours of two ingredients that may not seem immediately complementary are bridged by a third or fourth flavour - such as duck and mango bridged with ginger.
There's a lot of information in this book, how to taste, how to cook, to get the best from your oven, steamer, microwave, pressure cooker or smoker, and how to temper food - adding herbs, spices, cheese or other flavours for the last few minutes of cooking.
Enjoyment of food and eating is important - if a would-be cook or chef has ambition but doesn't actually enjoy eating, his or her food is likely to involve more skill than taste, and be more of an adventure than a pleasure for those at the knife-and-fork end of the proceedings, he says.
It's an unusual, but useful book about cooking and eating for anyone who cooks and/or eats.
