When someone is ill, newly home with a baby, grieving or simply flattened, food is the most useful thing you can give and the easiest thing to get slightly wrong. The difference between a gift and a chore is almost entirely in what you cook and how you hand it over.
Ask one question first
“Is there anything you cannot eat at the moment?” That covers allergies, medication, nausea, treatment, and the perfectly ordinary fact that some foods are unbearable at some times. Do not ask what they would like. Deciding is the work you are trying to remove. Say what you are bringing and when, and give them a way to say no.
Cook things that are soft, warm and mild
Soup, broth with noodles, rice porridge, dal, a simple stew, mashed potato, eggs, plain chicken with rice. Anything that can be eaten with a spoon, in bed, without concentration. Under-season rather than over-season. Illness and medication change how things taste, and it is far easier for someone to add salt, chilli or lemon than to remove them.
Take it in containers that never come back
The worst version of this gift is a dish they now have to wash, store and return. Use something disposable or something you genuinely do not want back, and say so clearly. Label it: what it is, what is in it, and how to heat it. A person who is unwell should not have to work out what a frozen block was.
Portion it small and freeze half
Single portions get eaten; a family-sized tub gets looked at. Two or three small containers are more useful than one large one, and half of them should go straight in the freezer for the week after, when everyone else has stopped bringing things. The second week is when the help disappears and the need does not. Food that keeps is the part of this that matters most.
Bring the boring things too
Bread, milk, fruit, tea, eggs, something to snack on at three in the morning. Everyone brings a casserole; almost nobody brings the things that run out. And leave rather than stay, unless you are asked to stay. Drop it at the door, say there is no need to reply, and go. That is the version of this that costs the person receiving it nothing at all.
Ask what they cannot eat, cook something soft and mild, portion it small, label it, use containers you will not want back, and include the dull staples. Then leave. Food given that way is genuinely help rather than one more thing to manage.