latte

Caffè latte, often shortened to just latte in English, is a coffee drink of Italian origin made with espresso and steamed milk. Variants include the chocolate-flavored mocha or replacing the coffee with another beverage base such as masala chai (spiced Indian tea), mate, matcha, turmeric or rooibos; alternatives to milk, such as soy milk or almond milk, are also used. The term comes from the Italian or , from , literally "coffee and milk"; in English orthography either or both words sometimes have an accent on the final e (a hyperforeignism in the case of *latté, or to indicate it is pronounced, not the more-common silent final e of English). In northern Europe and Scandinavia, the term café au lait has traditionally been used for the combination of espresso and milk. In France, is from the original name of the beverage (caffè latte); a combination of espresso and steamed milk equivalent to a "latte" is in French called ( using cream instead of milk) and in German . Origin and history Coffee, which was adopted from the Ottoman Empire, and milk have been part of European cuisine since the seventeenth century. Coffee was introduced to Europe by the Ottoman (Turkish) Empire during the invasion of Hungary in 1526. The Turks were also responsible for introducing coffee to Vienna, Austria in 1529. Coffee was first mentioned in European texts in 1575 in the Aromatum et simplicium aliquot medica-mentorum apud Indos nascientum historia of Charles de l'Ecluse. Caffè e latte, , café au lait, and are domestic terms of traditional ways of drinking coffee, usually as part of breakfast in the home. Public cafés in Europe and the USA seem to have no mention of the terms until the twentieth century, although Kapuziner is mentioned in Austrian coffee houses in Vienna and Trieste in the second half of 1700s as "coffee with cream, spices, and sugar" (being the origin of the Italian cappuccino). Melange or café au lait was introduced in Austrian coffeehouses around 1850.