What’s the difference between a café latte, a cappuccino, and a flat white?
Looking at the situation from a global perspective, not much.
I may get an argument on this point – in the coffee business, I’ve come to realize, you’ll get an argument on pretty much anything. However, I base it on scientific observation. OK, maybe not that scientific, but one does the best one can in a challenging information environment. A few data points:
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Lots of people think there should be a difference. I think there should be a difference, at least in principle, else why have different names? And in any well-defined setting – your local coffee shop, for example, or a coffee chain, or maybe just your kitchen – there most likely is a difference, based on somebody’s idea of standard practice. However, there aren’t any standard standards, by which I mean not just points of commonality but a recipe you could reliably replicate. Fact is, in some cases the only point of commonality between two similarly-named products is they both contain coffee and milk. The other morning, for example, I had a macchiato from Intelligentsia, a Chicago-based coffee purveyor, which consisted of a cup of espresso topped with a thin layer of foamed milk. The milk took the edge off the espresso, but barely. If you were to order this drink expecting that, based on your experience with a Starbucks caramel macchiato, you’d be getting a coffee-flavored milkshake, you’d be in for quite a shock.
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To stipulate for the record, all milk-based espresso drinks, including not just café latte, cappuccino and flat white but also cortado, macchiato and various others, are made using the same equipment and ingredients, namely (for the pros anyway) an espresso machine, espresso coffee, and milk, although you can throw in lots of other frivolous garnishes, of which we will not speak. What’s more, to the untrained eye, and setting aside the question of containers, the techniques for making said drinks are often indistinguishable. So if you were some kinda shady underworld barista who wanted to sneak a cappuccino through the works when a latte was specified, it wouldn’t be that hard.
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The essential similarity of all coffee/milk blends having been conceded, some coffee aficionados nonetheless contend there is or ought to be a continuum of coffee-to-milk ratios (hereinafter C2M), with café latte toward the milky pole, cappuccino at the equator, flat white at International Falls, and macchiato above Point Barrow. This approach allows fine-tuning of one’s caffeine intake and a few places rigorously implement it. I ran across a YouTube video about a coffee shop in Brno, Czech Republic, a nation known for its precision engineering, here impressively displayed: café latte had a C2M ratio of 1:14, which to me is coffee on the homeopathic principle; cappuccino was 1:6 or 7; flat white was 1:4; and macchiato was 1:2.
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But that seems the exception rather than the rule. At Intelligentsia a macchiato is maybe 2:1 C2M, which is one of your bolder coffee statements, but the staff readily acknowledged that, according to the house interpretation, the only difference between a flat white and a café latte was the name. When I stopped in later that day for an exploratory cappuccino at Ritual, a coffee shop near my house, the barista pointed out the classic cappa recipe calls for 1/3 espresso, 1/3 liquid milk, and 1/3 foam, which she thought her take on it reasonably approximated (it looked that way in the glass). This gave us a C2M ratio of 1:2, a considerably more powerful jolt than you’d get in Brno, but since I was already pretty buzzed due to earlier coffees, my ability to clinically confirm this was materially impaired.
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That brings us to the subject of containers or, as the coffee cognoscenti refer to them, vessels. If we posit for the sake of argument that the core difference between coffee beverages is the C2M ratio, an easy way to achieve a consistent result is to define the size of the vessel. In 2015, the year Starbucks introduced the flat white to the U.S. market, the coffee website Sprudge noted the global lack of agreement on what a flat white actually was, and polled the citizens of Australia and New Zealand, where the beverage was invented in the 1980s. Surprisingly, considering Aussies and Kiwis can’t even agree on which country is actually the flat white’s birth place, although they’re certain it was one of the two, 70% thought a proper flat white ought to be served in a 5.5 or 6 ounce vessel, and 59% thought it should have two shots of espresso. In other words, the consensus antipodean view was that a standard flat white had a C2M ratio of 1:3, dependably arrived at through the combination of lotta coffee + little cup.
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Then along came Starbucks, the largest coffee chain in the world. A flat white in the U.S., as far as the average American is concerned, is whatever Starbucks says it is. As with macchiato, the chief similarity between a Starbucks flat white and the Down Under version is they both contain coffee and milk. According to the Starbucks online ordering page, 8- and 12-ounce cups contain two ristretto shots (8-ounce or short cups are typically available on an off-menu basis), and 16- and 20-ounce cups contain three. A ristretto shot is half the volume of a regular espresso shot but is said to be more intense. This complicates comparison but let’s assume that, from the standpoint of caffeine and flavor delivery, a ristretto shot is equivalent to a regular shot. The C2M ratio in this beverage, therefore, ranges from 1:4 (roughly comparable to an Oz/NZ FW) to 1:6.7 (way different). To put it another way, the C2M ratio in a Starbucks flat white isn’t determined by the name of the beverage but the size of the cup.
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And no, I’m not hating on Starbucks. Since espresso coffee is brewed and delivered on a quantum basis (that is, X number of shots per drink), the same issue comes up with any coffee vendor that uses standard paper cups, meaning pretty much any vendor, period.
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I could go on – I haven’t even started on milk foam vs. froth – but you see my point. The differences among popular coffee beverages are all but meaningless, as even some coffee lovers cheerfully admit. (OK, a cappuccino will give you more of a milk mustache due to the layer of froth, a minor factor in my estimation, but whatever floats your boat.) Do I think this is an outrage? Nope, just saying don’t expect much from the nomenclature. You’re buying a custom-made beverage; if you want more coffee in it, tell the barista to add a shot. (Although they’d rather you didn’t ask for a no-foam latte – the steaming procedure needed to do this makes a godawful shriek.)
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Then sit down at the counter by the window, admire the latte art if you’re lucky enough to get it, and be grateful. American coffee 40 years ago was, by and large, undrinkable sludge. Now it’s easy to come by a cup that’s very good to excellent. It won’t cure everything that ails you, and it may have a silly name, but it’s a reliable small comfort in a wicked world.
– CECIL ADAMS
After some time off to recharge, Cecil Adams is back! The Master can answer any question. Post questions or topics for investigation in the Cecil’s Columns forum on the Straight Dope Message Board, boards.straightdope.com/.
