Where does Cortado (espresso cut with milk) come from?
The cortado comes from Spain, where it is a café staple all over the country. Its name says what it is: an espresso 'cut', cortado in Spanish, with warm milk to soften its bite. From Spain it spread through Latin America and, later, to coffee shops worldwide.
An espresso, cut with milk
Cortado is the past participle of the Spanish verb cortar, 'to cut', here in the sense of diluting. The milk takes the edge off the coffee's acidity and bitterness. In Spain the drink is small and strong: the Royal Spanish Academy's dictionary defines café cortado as coffee with very little milk, usually a single espresso with a splash of warm milk. The milk is steamed but not frothed. In Catalan the same drink is called a tallat, again meaning 'cut'.
Across the Atlantic
Beyond Spain, the cortado is popular throughout Latin America, where it goes by many local names, among them perico, pintado and marrón. One sweet variant, the cortadito, is cut with heated sweetened condensed milk, a preserved milk that was easier to find when fresh milk often was not. Across Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking countries, cortado can mean various coffee or espresso drinks 'cut' with milk, so the exact recipe changes from place to place.
Why people think of Italy
Many milky coffee drinks on café menus are Italian, such as the cappuccino and the caffè macchiato, and the cortado has close cousins in the macchiato and the French noisette. But a macchiato carries only a spot of milk foam, and a cappuccino a head of foam and milk. In specialty cafés abroad, the cortado is usually made with roughly equal parts espresso and steamed milk; in the United States the trend began partly under another name, the 'gibraltar', after the Libbey glass it was served in.
Sources: en.wikipedia.org ↗ · es.wikipedia.org ↗ · dle.rae.es › café ↗ · dle.rae.es › cortado ↗
