A coffee puzzle.

Go into a cafe in any provincial French town before about 11am and you'll be able to get "un petit café créme avec un croissant" and consume them standing at the bar. If you're greedy you can have "un grand café créme" and a pain au chocolat. But look on the internet, even in wikipedia and all discussion of coffee is by Americans and trying to find recipes for the authentic café créme is impossible. The Petit is typically in a large/double expresso cup. The Grand is often served in something more like a small soup bowl. They both involve expresso and hot milk. But they are both emphatically NOT a latte, capuccino, flat white, Cortado or any of the other hundreds of white coffees. And they would never involve cream or that horrible American concoction, Half''n'half. It's quite likely that the milk is skimmed and may even be UHT.

So how do you make them? I think, as follows.

Un petit café créme: One shot of Expresso, slow pulled into a large expresso cup, usually brown outer, white inner, with a saucer. Add approximately equal quantities of warmed semi-skimmed milk that's just been hit by the steam pipe to get it hot but before it starts frothing.

Un grand café créme: Two shots of Expresso, slow pulled into a giant coffee cup or small soup bowl. Roughly two to one hot milk to coffee brought to a point just before it boils and froths.