Or maybe it really should be “stained milk”. Lately, whenever I order coffee, I’ve been asking for “café con leche” (coffee with milk) and then adding “with extra milk”. This morning, where we stopped for breakfast, I did this as usual, and the woman who served us told me in her quite good English, “we call that manchado“. She said, “think of a white tee-shirt that has a little coffee stain on it.” Milk with just a little bit of coffee. Mancha is the Spanish word for stain. Same word as in “Man of La Mancha.” So, manchado means stained. So, I need to be ordering café manchado. Cool!
Yes, it is funny how there are so many special (regional) words for coffee variations. In Austria you can order a “verlängeter,” which literally means “extended.” Took me forever when I lived there to figure out what it is: espresso diluted with hot water, what in Italy is called a Caffè Americano. Also, a “schwartz” (black) is an espresso. A “brauner” (brown) is a schwartz served with a small pitcher of milk.
That’s interesting it is also true in Austria! Certainly is in Italy. Charlie and I were just remembering that in Italy they call coffee (espresso) with a tiny bit of milk “cafe macchiato”. I just looked up and that means “stained coffee”. But it’s the opposite meaning as in Spain. Here the thing stained is the milk (stained by coffee) but the opposite in Italy. Funny.
It’s stained coffee because it’s mostly coffee with the barest amount of milk. Where what you are drinking is a small amount of coffee with a lot of milk.