Cooking for Capricorn? Don't mess about. Have the meal on the table hot, on time and make sure there's plenty of it. Capricorn will be there on cue, starving after a long day at the bank, the easel, or wherever it is they earn their pile.

Capricorns enjoy food, but it's first and foremost fuel, stuff that allows them to get on with the important things in life - like working. Don't be fooled by complaints about the endless hours they put in - the Mountain Goat has to keep climbing until it reaches the top of the heap, If that means surviving on machine coffee and stale canteen rolls, they can take it.

Capricorns expect to dine in style. Though they're happy to schmooze at the latest over-hyped bistro, they're also drawn to stuffy, establishment eating holes where old-money hangs out - anywhere, in short, which shows the world they've arrived. Unlike the other earth signs, Taurus and Virgo, cooking is not a skill that comes easily to the Goat. It's a control issue.

Capricorns like rules - for things to behave in an orderly, predictable fashion - their steely will does the rest. Recipes that don't work exactly drive them to distraction. When a Capricorn does become a chef it will be with serious intent. There are Michelin stars to win, restaurant empires to build, celebrity customers to woo, a culinary mountain to climb.

The Capricorn kitchen will be a well-organised cookery machine rather than a downhome, mother earth retreat. Saturn is the Goat's ruling planet, and to its pragmatic realm are attributed no-nonsense starchy foods like cornflour, potato, and barley. Cloven-hoofed creatures like pigs also come under Capricorn's domain. So does curried goat, but ask before serving.