If you need to know where the world’s only lychee and dog meat festival takes place (China, since you ask) or what connects the Emperor Claudius and Vladimir Putin (having a food taster), then The Gannet’s Gastronomic Miscellany is your consummate culinary guide. In one of those entertaining stocking fillers revelling in the everyday and the bizarre, Killian Fox gathers offbeat material from online food magazine the Gannet, reprints Fergus Henderson’s deep-fried squirrel recipe, runs through how to become an Instagram food star and, probably most pertinently, explains what tastes like chicken (alligator, kangaroo, two-toed amphiuma) and what doesn’t; apparently, a porpoise head is akin to “broiled lamp wick”.

The Gannet’s Gastronomic Miscellany also contains possibly the final word on the five-second rule – if you drop a cookie on a floor infected with E coli, you’re in trouble, no matter how long it’s been there. This enjoyable ramble through foodie idiosyncrasies is just as infectious – and unlike an E coli cookie, best enjoyed in bite-size chunks.

• The Gannet’s Gastronomic Miscellany by Killian Fox is published by Mitchell Beazley (£11.99). To order a copy for £10.19 go to guardianbookshop.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £10, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of £1.99