Cafe au Lait Day

What the day is

Cafe au Lait Day is observed on February 17. The drink is brewed coffee and hot milk in roughly equal parts, served in a wide cup or a bowl, and it is the plainest of the milk coffees.

It is worth distinguishing from its espresso relatives. A latte is espresso with steamed milk and a thin layer of foam. A cappuccino is espresso with a thicker foam cap. A cafe au lait uses drip, press or other brewed coffee with scalded milk, and there is no foam involved at all. The proportion does the work.

Origin and background

The origin of the observance is not documented. The drink is French domestic tradition, taken at breakfast, often in a wide bowl rather than a cup so that bread can be dipped into it.

Its best-known American form is the New Orleans version, made with coffee blended with roasted chicory root. That practice dates to periods when coffee was scarce and expensive, particularly around the Civil War blockade, and chicory was used to stretch the supply. It survived the shortage because people came to prefer the taste: chicory adds body and a woody bitterness that stands up to a large quantity of milk.

The bowl-and-bread version and the chicory version are both defensible, and both differ from what most coffee shops will hand you if you order a cafe au lait, which is frequently just a latte under another name.

How to take part

• Brew the coffee stronger than you would drink it black. Equal parts milk will flatten a standard-strength cup.
• Scald the milk rather than boiling it. Heat until it steams and the surface trembles; boiled milk tastes cooked.
• Pour coffee and milk together into the cup at the same time, which is the traditional method and mixes without stirring.
• Try it with chicory at least once. It is widely sold and tastes markedly different from straight coffee.
• Use a wide bowl and dip something in it. That is the version the drink was built for.