Nobody cooks a meal like Marie Barone. If we had to choose a mother from television, we’d ask for home cooking from the iconic matriarch of Everybody Loves Raymond. Doris Roberts, who portrayed Marie for many years on the hit series, revealed in her memoir that though she was playing a character on screen, she really was cooking with real food when the situation called for it.

“To give the scenes authenticity, I always handle real food on the set,” Roberts wrote in her memoir, Are You Hungry, Dear?: Life, Laughs, and Lasagna. “If Brad [Garrett] wants a mortadella sandwich, I’m back there at the counter with real bread, mortadella, mayonnaise, lettuce, and cheese. The refrigerator on the set is always stocked with actual food: milk, soda, cheese, butter, eggs, Pop-Tarts, ice cream in the freezer, and special items for particular scenes.”

But while Roberts was known for whipping up her fair share of delicacies, she recalled her own cooking “disaster” while rehearsing a scene for an upcoming episode.

Watch Everybody Loves Raymond on MeTV!

ONE FULL HOUR

Weeknights at 9 PM & Sundays at 10 PM

*available in most MeTV markets

“The disaster came when I had to really make pancakes,” wrote Roberts. “I pour, turn, and serve pancakes at just the right moment in the scene while acting a fairly substantial part in the events. During rehearsal, I did something completely out of character for Marie; I forgot to turn the pancakes over. They burned!”

Of course, Marie Barone would have been disappointed. However, Doris Roberts was able to learn from her mistakes and come back even better than before. “Fortunately for all, I got the timing down perfectly on the day we actually filmed,” wrote the actor.