What if the cappuccino you had this morning was not, in fact, a cappuccino? Scary. More worrisome still: What if your flat white was?
There was a time when cappuccino was easy to identify. It was a shot of espresso with steamed milk and a meringue-like milk foam on top. But now the onetime king of specialty coffee drinks is having a bit of an identity crisis.
Even among experts, there is considerable disagreement concerning what exactly a cappuccino is, with some of those in the know focusing on the size of the drink as its distinguishing characteristic.
“In the U.S., cappuccino are small, medium and large, and that actually doesn’t exist,” the food and coffee writer Oliver Strand said. “Cappuccino is basically a four-ounce drink.”
Todd Carmichael, a founder of La Colombe, a coffee roasting company with cafes in New York and other cities, is not so hung up on the ounce factor. “We’ve made the cappuccino mobile,” he said. “With 8 to 10 ounces, the flavors do not go away. They’re just less intense.”
Others cling to old-school notions of what makes a cappuccino, with the layering of ingredients as the main thing. “The goal is to serve three distinct layers: caffè, hot milk and frothy (not dense) foam,” the chef and writer Mario Batali wrote in an email. “But to drink it Italian style, it will be stirred so that the three stratum come together as one.”