Wiener Melange

Why this works

Melange is French for mixture, and the drink is a mix in proportion as well as name: about equal parts coffee and milk with foam on top. What makes it different from an Italian cappuccino is the coffee. Vienna's base is traditionally a Verlängerter, a lengthened coffee, roughly an espresso stretched with hot water to around 90 ml. It is milder and less concentrated, so the Melange is a larger, gentler drink, closer to a café au lait with foam than to a strong small cappuccino.

The milk is foamed looser too. A cappuccino's foam is dense and integrated with the coffee. A Melange's foam is lighter and sits as a soft dome, often spooned on separately. Steaming to around 60°C keeps it sweet, because milk tastes sweetest at that point and starts to taste cooked above 70.

The glass of water is not decoration. In Viennese coffeehouse culture it signals that you are welcome to stay, and waiters top it up without being asked. The silver tray goes with the same idea: coffee as an occasion rather than a transaction.

Vienna's coffeehouses trace their origins to the late seventeenth century, and in 2011 UNESCO listed Viennese coffeehouse culture as part of Austria's intangible cultural heritage. The Melange is the drink at the centre of it. Austria's coffeehouse menus are famous for their length and precision, with a different word for every ratio of coffee, milk and cream, and this is the one most people order.

Variations

• With whipped cream: a spoon of Schlagobers instead of milk foam, as some cafés serve it.
• Franziskaner: a Melange with whipped cream instead of foam.
• Verkehrter: a reversed coffee, more milk than coffee, Vienna's latte.
• Mazagran: Vienna's cold coffee with rum and ice, unrelated to the Portuguese version.