It was a harmonious evening when the five-year-old son suddenly caused a stir.

"It doesn't taste like Rosa's," he said, as clear in his judgment as only a child can be.

We even cooked the dish especially for him, based on the recipe from Rosa Helfrich, the cook at his day care center in Oberursel.

Noodles in a salmon and cream sauce, just like what is served in the day care center: salmon fillet, two leeks, butter, flour, vegetable stock, whipped cream, lemon juice and a little pepper - as in the recipe.

Martin Benninghoff

Editor in the Rhein-Main-Zeitung.

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But we reckoned without the landlord, or rather the little gourmet king at the dinner table, who doesn't always eat as well as we would like - which child does that?

However, we were apparently inaccurate: Because Helfrich now uses white ribbon noodles, while we bought the green spinach ribbon noodles, as it says in the recipe in her little cookbook "Rosa's Cooking World".

"It's disgusting," said the son.

And I just thought what real master forgers have long since internalized: a plagiarism has to be perfect, otherwise it's worthless.

Beltracchi says hello.

Lesson one: Subtleties like pasta color can make all the difference.

Or the shape.

Or a peppercorn that got lost in the sauce.

But maybe there is also a kind of eternal secret for the perfect kitchen for children.

And who should know it better than Rosa Helfrich?

In any case, your first name is mentioned more often at home.

"It doesn't taste like Rosa's" or "Rosa's is better" are sentences that have led us to attribute superhuman abilities to her after a while - without knowing her personally.

Reason enough to get to know her and to elicit the secret of everlasting culinary delight from her.

Recipe for success: Dampfnudeln

We meet in the daycare kitchen after her shift.

"I cook with love," says Helfrich.

She has to, because the trained tailor with Silesian roots has been doing it for 30 years, since her two sons went to the same daycare center.

Today they are 36 and 34, but the mother, who will be 58 this year, has remained loyal to the day care center.

Five days a week, together with a kitchen hand, she cooks for dozens of children and the educators.

If you ask her about her recipe for success, the kitchen bestseller that outlasts children and culinary fashions across generations, she spontaneously mentions Dampfnudeln, the yeast dumpling with vanilla sauce.

"I've been preparing this since day one," she says.

Not every recipe lasts that long.

For example, she removed burgers from her menu.

Too complicated when it comes to eating, she says.

Helfrich does not reinvent the kitchen, she cooks classic home cooking that can be adapted to suit children.

That's the second lesson: "I simplify the recipes I know," says the unskilled cook, who says of her old trade, tailoring, that it cannot outweigh the joy of cooking.

Her recipe for Königsberger Klopse could also be in an adult cookbook, with one small exception: Instead of the capers, which tend to be unpopular with children, she dices gherkins into small cubes, which from experience would be better.