[the_old_crowd] Notions of potions

[Waldo Glatisant]

--- Barry Arrowsmith <arrowsmithbt at ...>
wrote:
... [regarding potions]
> Looks more like cookery to me.
...
> And just like cookery, one might try various
> combinations of  
> ingredients and techniques before deciding which is
> best. 
...
> Who is going to have the time or opportunity to
> fiddle around in an  
> attempt to improve on the standard recipe?  Or the
> inclination, come  
> to that. Unless you see your career path as potions,
> potions, all the  
> way, why bother?
... [more on the unlikelihood of students
experimenting and discovering improvements in the
potions]...

Points taken, although as someone who likes to cook
from time to time and on occasion actually does look
at a recipe, the metaphor of cookery might lead one to
the opposite conclusion.  That is to say, if you are
familiar with certain ingredients and how they behave
in various amounts, combinations, and for different
heats / durations of cooking, you start to have a kind
of intuition about how to monkey around with recipes. 


For example, I know not to take certain recipes for
pie crusts seriously when they say certain things. If
you follow what they say to the letter you will have
nothing resembling a pie crust in the end.  I also
know that when a recipe calls for a certain amount of
garlic, I usually treble it. I can tell by looking at
the amount of sauce in a pot and the amount of spice
in my hand whether it will be enough (if I am just
cooking for 2 or 3 people that is). I know that no
matter what the recipe says in terms of rising and
kneading times, the bread dough should be a certain
consistency before you let it rise or put it in to
bake ... and can usually tell by looking that
something needs to come off or out of the heat,
regardless of what the recipe indicates regarding time
and temperature. In short, recipes are mere
suggestions and a cook has to have a sense of how the
ingredients are supposed to behave at each of the
stages of the cooking, and if they don't look / smell
/ feel right, you best make some changes. 

So ... if the cooking metaphor is our guide, a potions
geek may very well get a sense of how the various
ingredients / combinations / methods interact, and may
in fact have an "intuition" about how to tweek a
recipe. 

> Depends how much you trust Horace. Not very
> far, would be my response.
...
> Kneasy

As my wife always says, no further than you can
comfortably spit a weasel.  

Yep, I tend to think that the book did not
accidentally find its way into Harry's hands. I don't
think that such coincidences happen often in this type
of fiction.  Judging from Snape's reaction when he
Occulo-thingies Harry after Harry Sectumsempra-s
Draino, I'd say that Snape had no part in Harry
getting that book to begin with. So who did? I'd say
his Slugginess. 

-Waldo

-

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