I didn't have time to do a full-blown essay this month, so here's a bit of meta and a few fic recs...
There's obviously a certain parallel between cooking and Potions; as I have Hermione say in one of my fics ("Phoenix Rising"), "When you think about it...cooking is almost like Potion brewing. You have to add just the right mixture of ingredients--" In reply, Snape snorts derisively. This is because although I think that Snape would probably be good at cooking, I also think that he would regard it as something mundane and trivial in comparison to the subtle art of potion-brewing.
I assume that he probably did have to cook for himself during the few years between his finishing school and being hired as a teacher at Hogwarts. It's kind of hard to picture him living at home with his Muggle father while he's working as a Death Eater, so I assume that he was living on his own during that time, which means that he'd have to do his own cooking unless he ate out every day. But he would regard it as a mundane chore, something done out of necessity and not worthy of the kind of effort that he puts into his potions...or would he?
One could just as easily argue the opposite, that he would carry his Potions skills over into the kitchen, and that since he never does anything by halves, that he would become a gourmet chef if he decided to take up cooking. It could actually become his full-time career if he decides that he wants a change after the war ends, to leave Hogwarts and take up something completely different, as he does in these two Snupin fics:
Title: A New Line of Work
Author:![[info]](https://www.insanejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif)
snegurochka_lee
Rating: PG
A wonderfully humorous ficlet where Snape becomes a sushi chef in Japan, putting the same skill and dedication that he did as a Potions Master into his new craft. There's a pun at the end that you won't fully appreciate unless you understand Japanese, so I'll clue you in now that "unagi" means "eel". ;-)
Title: Love Potion Number Eleven
Author:florahart
Rating: NC-17
A hilarious Top Chef parody done Snupin-style, where Snape, Lupin, and several other HP characters are competing in a cooking contest by preparing aphrodisiacs. Snape makes a raspberry-chocolate conconction that is wonderfully subtle and mouth-watering in its description, so I'd advise that you have some chocolates on hand when you read this, because you'll surely be craving some by the time it's over.
While they're humorous fics, it's nice to see Snape content and working in a profession completely unrelated to spying or the war, so I can see how he might want to become a chef.
Still, my own perception of Snape is that he considers cooking to be mundane and not on the same level as potion-brewing--which doesn't necessarily mean that he isn't good at it or doesn't enjoy it. Snape being Snape, he just pretends that he doesn't. ^_^
In my own fic, Chocolate-Covered Werewolf (Snape/Lupin, PG-13), Snape is planning to make some homemade Valentine's chocolates for Lupin, but gets sidetracked when Lupin's own cooking experiment goes awry.
And in The Werewolf Jamboree (Snape/Lupin, PG), Snape enjoys baking but is very embarrassed when Lupin convinces him to enter his Sour Cream Dark Chocolate Cake in a bake-off and it wins first place. Though he does take some satisfaction in beating Molly Weasley!
There's obviously a certain parallel between cooking and Potions; as I have Hermione say in one of my fics ("Phoenix Rising"), "When you think about it...cooking is almost like Potion brewing. You have to add just the right mixture of ingredients--" In reply, Snape snorts derisively. This is because although I think that Snape would probably be good at cooking, I also think that he would regard it as something mundane and trivial in comparison to the subtle art of potion-brewing.
I assume that he probably did have to cook for himself during the few years between his finishing school and being hired as a teacher at Hogwarts. It's kind of hard to picture him living at home with his Muggle father while he's working as a Death Eater, so I assume that he was living on his own during that time, which means that he'd have to do his own cooking unless he ate out every day. But he would regard it as a mundane chore, something done out of necessity and not worthy of the kind of effort that he puts into his potions...or would he?
One could just as easily argue the opposite, that he would carry his Potions skills over into the kitchen, and that since he never does anything by halves, that he would become a gourmet chef if he decided to take up cooking. It could actually become his full-time career if he decides that he wants a change after the war ends, to leave Hogwarts and take up something completely different, as he does in these two Snupin fics:
Title: A New Line of Work
Author:
snegurochka_lee Rating: PG
A wonderfully humorous ficlet where Snape becomes a sushi chef in Japan, putting the same skill and dedication that he did as a Potions Master into his new craft. There's a pun at the end that you won't fully appreciate unless you understand Japanese, so I'll clue you in now that "unagi" means "eel". ;-)
Title: Love Potion Number Eleven
Author:
florahart Rating: NC-17
A hilarious Top Chef parody done Snupin-style, where Snape, Lupin, and several other HP characters are competing in a cooking contest by preparing aphrodisiacs. Snape makes a raspberry-chocolate conconction that is wonderfully subtle and mouth-watering in its description, so I'd advise that you have some chocolates on hand when you read this, because you'll surely be craving some by the time it's over.
While they're humorous fics, it's nice to see Snape content and working in a profession completely unrelated to spying or the war, so I can see how he might want to become a chef.
Still, my own perception of Snape is that he considers cooking to be mundane and not on the same level as potion-brewing--which doesn't necessarily mean that he isn't good at it or doesn't enjoy it. Snape being Snape, he just pretends that he doesn't. ^_^
In my own fic, Chocolate-Covered Werewolf (Snape/Lupin, PG-13), Snape is planning to make some homemade Valentine's chocolates for Lupin, but gets sidetracked when Lupin's own cooking experiment goes awry.
And in The Werewolf Jamboree (Snape/Lupin, PG), Snape enjoys baking but is very embarrassed when Lupin convinces him to enter his Sour Cream Dark Chocolate Cake in a bake-off and it wins first place. Though he does take some satisfaction in beating Molly Weasley!
How this adds up in my mind:
I am one of those who thinks the fish and chips wrapper on the riverbank was his. I think he'd like simple, traditional foods like this.
I don't see him fussing much (if at all) in the kitchen during canon, but, as I said, I think he would be able to cook some basic foods quite well. (In my personal canon, he learns from his maternal grandmother, both parents being dead by the time he's thirteen.) He loves bacon butties, and often makes them for breakfast, and he is, in his way, pertsnickety about tea. But, in general, in this period, he has neither the time nor the psychic energy to cook.
Post-canon, he actually learns to enjoy cooking, and the family cooks Sunday dinner together. I had a snippet of fic in mind to illustrate what I'd imagine this to be like, but never got to pound it out, as I had other deadlines and too much else going on.
His favorite foods:
Bacon, toast,porridge, fish and chips, tea, roast beef and Yorkshire pudding (when he can get it), colcannon and champ, and mashed potatoes generally, gravy. He's not much for fancy experimental stuff, in my mind. He does like food when someone puts it in front of him, but this is the sort of thing he is inclined to cook for himself.
Alison