I was walking today for a while with an Italian woman who knows a lot about coffee (maybe not unusual).
I wanted to get to the bottom of the strange expression "flat white coffee", and associated terms, that took hold in Australia about 20 years ago. I'm pretty sure nowhere else in the world uses this mysterious description for coffee.
According to her, the types of coffee include:
cafe corto, cafe lungo, which must correspond to short black and long black.
Coffee that uses milk often uses the word "macchiato", which means stained, in the sense of "I have a tomato sauce stain on my shirt".
This is used for the types of coffee:
cafe macchiato, latte macchiato, where the word before macchiato is the largest ingredient. Thus latte macchiato is mostly milk, with a little bit of coffee.
In her opinion, the Spanish "cafe con leche" can be either latte macchiato or cappuccino, depending on how much froth the particular bar uses.
This leaves the question of the difference between cafe latte and latte macchiato. In her opinion, cafe latte is usually what people make at home because they don't have a machine to make creamy froth. What you get at a bar is latte macchiato.
This still leaves the problem of "flat white coffee". She had of course never heard this term and was understandably mystified by it. From my experience, a flat white is really a cappacino without much froth.
Can anyone throw light on this puzzle?
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Paul we are winning today one hour, from summer to winter time. One hour longer to stay awake in one day needs a good cup of coffee. Your Australian flat is unknown here. It is like you noticed, coffee with hot milk = cream but no froth. The capucino is made with hot milk froth and espresso of course. Did you have spoken Italian or could she speaks English ? Guess the long discussion was going on with short Spanish words by drinking a black coffee in a white room. Yes the cream still in my mind. Good luck with the uphill to La Faba. There you will need something stronger, German lager. Bart
ReplyDeleteI thought a flat white was a filter coffee with milk . Flat meaning no froth. It's the equivalent of an Americano which is an expresso topped up with boiling water ( plus milk). I'm more a tea drinker. I've just arrived at college with my loose Earl Grey pre-loaded into a diffuser (or perhaps it's a strainer!)
ReplyDeleteI thought a flat white is made with an espresso machine, like a capachono.
ReplyDeleteA short black is called here "cafe solo". Occasionally someone orders a cafe solo americano which, as you say, is probably a short black with more hot water.
Hi Paul,I see you've understood everything about my coffee lesson!
ReplyDeleteI don't know what your flat white coffee is..
I only know that now in Italy I finally had a wonderful cappuccino after a month of spanish cafè con leche.. Beyond comparison!!
Hola :)
Hello Sara,
ReplyDeleteI'm glad to hear that you are back in coffee heaven, and thank you for your valuable lessons in this very important matter. I have still been unable to find anyone outside Australia who has heard of a "flat white". The mystery continues.
I hope the Camino was a good experience for you, it certainly was for me.
If I find any more flat white information, I will post it on this blog!!
Paul