Mum's cooking that I cannot equal however hard I try.

My mouth is absolutely watering Greyduster at your mums' Roast beef and Yorkshire pudding cooking method even though I do not know what a Yorkshire range is ??.
I can imagine though that there must have been some really glorious smells in the kitchen.

I come from a very long line of good bakers/cooks and my DD and DS are both following on as are DGC. My Granny had the family bakery which was very popular. Everyone in the family had their own speciality and I think you have to find your own speciality and not expect to be the same as anyone else in your family. I am much better than my mother in everything except for her girdle scones and apple pies but DH says mine are every bit as good as hers were.
DD taught her now SIL to cook while they were at uni and she is a very good cook. Her granny tells her to stand on her tiptoes to make her pastry after she has washed her hands in iced water!
DH loves cooking anything and everything and has inherited that from his mum, my DMIL, who was Cook in a very large House. I feel the need to use the capital letters as she was brilliant and I was in awe! Her cakes for afternoon tea were legendary and exquisitely decorated with real flowers, picked from her garden, which she frosted with egg white and caster sugar.
To cook/bake successfully I think that you have to really enjoy what you are doing, have bags of confidence that it is going to be superb and most important of all feel well. If I am not well enough I know not to bother!

Yikes pressed post too soon
Should read 'her tins were full of homes made cakes'

Just to add The Cooking Gene passed me by

My grandmother could feed a dozen people from one chicken!
Her soup were hearty and tasty, wonderful comfort food.
Her time were full of home made cakes and her pantry full of lovely jams and preserves.
This cooking gene was passed on to my mother and in turn to my sister.

My mother’s cooking was largely unremarkable, but she did a good Sunday lunch. When she cooked on the old Yorkshire range, with its fire oven, the beef would be cooked on a rack above the Yorkshire pudding so that it caught the meat juices. When she had to switch to a gas cooker, that practice had to stop and we all missed it. She made excellent rabbit stew with herb dumplings. Mine is an also ran.

My dear Mum was an absolutely lovely person but she had no interest in cooking. She had better things to do.We all taught ourselves to cook as soon as we could. I love cooking.

My lovely Mum made the best cottage pie ever, but for the life of her, Mum could not make pastry.
Bless her dear heart, she tried, but she just did not have the light fingered touch.
I swear that you could tile a roof with my mum's pastry.
?

Like many others, mum made beautiful pastry. Her meat pie dinner, with very dark greens and mashed potato was so good, and a favourite of mine. She never had a pair of scales, but used to measure flour by the tablespoonful. Bread pudding was another favourite., with or without custard. We never seem to have stale bread these days.

My Mum makes amazing sausage rolls. I always used to take a batch into work at Christmas for the buffet we had on the last day.

When I retired last May, they were all bemoaning the fact there would be no more sausage rolls!

In fact she has always been a wonderful cook and baker, and still is at the age of 88!

Apart from her fruitcakes my mum was a very mediocre cook. I am much better. In the other hand, my dad was brilliant!

... the MEN in the family...

MOnica My mother would pour the yorkshire pudding mix under the rack the roast beef was cooked on. Apparently, this was an old trick: the mean in the family would get the meat while the women and children got the yorkshire pud with the meat juices in. In Yorkshire - am I right?

My mother was a pretty awful cook and I think that's what gave me my determination to be a good one.

my mum was what she called a plain cook,I did try to make her macaroni cheese rissoles last week ,sadly not enough cheese sauce so they were solid and not very good..I might try again

When my grandmother and aunt did roast lamb for lunch they always cooked it in a rack in the cooking tin and put a layer of suet pastry underneath, which, by the time the lamb cooked was delicious and crustyand I coudn't get enough of it ( and to h*ll with the health considerations, we didn't have it every day, only about once a month). I have tried to make it but always end up with this greasy mess with the consistency of a dumpling.

My mother was a good home cook but I'm better- she used lard for cooking - vile!

My mum used to make the most delicious faggots. Just thinking about them now is making my mouth water! I wrote the recipe down years ago but can't lay my hands on it now but they did contain minced up onions, bread, herbs like sage and of course offal - mainly liver. Mum wrapped the balls of mixture in membranous stuff which she called 'caul' and poached them in the oven. I have tried to buy 'caul' but it's the sort of thing that you don't get on the butcher counter any more.

I think we now tend to overthink the healthy options which is why we cannot emulate our mother’s cooking. I never buy lard, use only butter for pastry and cakes. The latter are made often with no fat at all. I know darn well that if I reverted to the old fashioned way of thinking (or not thinking) that taste would improve.

My mother made lovely pastry and her baked custard was the best ever. I still make rabbit pie like she did with a suet crust. Its my favourite meal. As to chips I am convinced we don’t get the same quality of potatoes nowadays.
I think it is probably the old gas ovens which had more hot air moving about inside.

My Nanna and Mum were rotten cooks. The chickens ate better than we did. And I have carried on the tradition.

I can't make pastry as good as my Mother's.

Mum’s mince pies,my workmates use to ask for them at Christmas. In fact any pastry she made and her pork crackling would melt in your mouth.

Could those old gas ovens be the secret of our mothers' Roast potatoes and chips (apart from the lard). Did they heat maybe to a higher temperature than modern ovens and so sealed the outside of the potatoes more quickly?

I can’t begin to equal my mother’s cooking, and gave up trying long ago. I don’t know if it’s possible to have a natural talent for cooking, or if it’s just a matter of practice and patience. The good cooks I know (including my mother) are very patient and willing to take time over details. I’m impatient and just want to get it over so I can do something more interesting.

Yes chips, pastry, cakes, scones all wonderful. She wasn’t quite so good with a roast dinner. In those days I think it was usual to over cooked roast meat, especially beef.