Bäbätsch.

Some recipes are written down in cookbooks. Others exist nowhere, because they only work as long as nobody writes them down. Bäbätsch belongs to the latter category.

I shall attempt it anyway.

It is not a dish. Nor is it a dessert. It is more a state, a moment. The only certainty is a small, warm tremor somewhere between the palate, memory, and a grandparent’s kitchen.

Bäbätsch consists of exactly three things. White bread, *Anke and **Hong (*butter and **honey in the local dialect). Nothing else. Which is precisely why everything is delicate.

The white bread is the stage. Too much of it, and the whole thing becomes dry, dutiful, and Protestant. A bread that has misunderstood its role and suddenly wants to be the leading actor. Too little, however, and the entire thing falls apart. Bäbätsch is no longer supported but drowned. In fat, sweetness, and in excess.

The butter is the foundation. It carries, connects, and keeps the memory supple.

Butter is the diplomat of this triangle, mediating between bread and honey, making sure neither becomes too loud.

The honey, finally, is the magic. Not sugar. Honey. Warm, floral, and faintly animal. Too much, and the Bäbätsch loses its dignity. Too little, and it loses its soul. Honey is not a topping. Honey is a promise.

What matters, then, is proportion. The right balance. It cannot be measured. It cannot be reproduced. There are no grams, no teaspoons, and certainly no instructions. Bäbätsch comes from years of experience, observation, and the knowledge of when enough is enough. And when it is not.

Then comes the mixing. Butter and honey must meet on the white bread. Not too intimately, or they become a faceless mass. Not too cautiously, or they remain two hostile camps. They must come together without surrendering who they are.

Preparing Bäbätsch requires a degree of judgement one occasionally wishes for in other areas of human coexistence.

My grandparents never talked about any of this. They simply did it. The white bread lay there as though it had arrived accidentally. The butter was soft, never melted or hard. The honey flowed slowly, often somewhat reluctantly, as honey does, as though it had to be persuaded for its own good.

And then came the moment when everything found its place, nothing dominated, and nothing was missing.

The first bite was less an event than a threshold: entry into a room you know, even if you have not visited it for a long time. The bread gave way. The butter melted. The honey paused for a moment, then vanished. Somewhere in between, something happened that today might be given a grand name but back then was simply understood.

A complete, silent in-mouth orgasm. No fuss.

Bäbätsch is precision, one of the earliest lessons in proportion, balance, and restraint. In the delicate arrangement between too much and too little. In knowing that pleasure has nothing to do with excess and everything to do with exactitude.

Sometimes happiness is a slice of white bread with Anke, Hong and nothing else.