Now I’m waiting for the Hames Joffman edit
I can’t watch right now but I’m genuinely interested because creamers fascinate me. It’s a super American concept I just don’t understand. Why not use milk instead of palm oil and corn syrup concoctions
They’re often creamier and sweeter than milk. I find them gross though.
I’m sorry, if you add milk, cream, creamer, etc to coffee, it’s not coffee. Like nobody would call a white russian “vodka”… I love white russians, but I don’t expect/make one when asking/being asked for vodka.
What’s it called, then? If you have to make up a name, then maybe you’re just being stubborn on this point. I like where your head is at, but what things are called are based on historical and social norms a lot of times. If someone likes putting cucumbers on their pizza, it’s still pizza (I side with Kramer on this, as there’s a Seinfeld episode about it).
It literally is called “Milk coffee” and “Cream coffee” respectively. The adjectives come first, because they contribute more to the drink than the coffee itself, which becomes merely the base for the drink.
I don’t need to make up any name, as you see. If the title had said “Too many milk coffee creamers”, I would have been on my way without reacting about it in the slightest. But it did not.
Because we live in a world of sugar and fat addicted people, and as other posts remarked, it is, irrationally, customary to specify “black” when ordering coffee, if you want actual coffee. Else you get a random drink with some fat, a whole lot of sugar (YMMV there, it varies depending on where in the world you are), and a bit of coffee.
And to react on your pizza example, if I would order a pizza, and would get 90% of cucumber per weight (or volume), it would be absolutely normal to complain. 🤷♂️
Come on. It’s still coffee. Milk has been added to coffee for at the very least 400 years and probably way longer than that.
Just because it’s not how you prefer your coffee, doesn’t make it any lesser of a drink. It’s just not your preference. It’s still coffee.
I’d even venture to say that coffee without milk or sweetener is the abnormal version. There’s no need for this gatekeeping.
White russian is a drink. A very tasty one, too. It’s not gatekeeping, it’s about naming things correctly.
Unless you’re doing science or law (and even then often), if people know what you mean when you refer to something, then you’ve used the “name” correctly. It is so common to add milk or sugar to coffee that there is minimal connotation of “black coffee” in the word “coffee” as people use it, at least in US English. For this reason, specifying “black coffee” is much more necessary than “straight vodka” in actual speech.
It’s very funny to want people to invent a whole new word that is the equivalent of white russian for putting milk in coffee. There’s no benefit to it. If you want to be pretentious about preferring to drink your coffee a certain way, you can do that anytime. Or maybe you can give it a special name. From now on drinking coffee black is called Asshole Coffee. Put it in the dictionary.
It’s a bit different with espresso drinks because those do have specific names that are in common usage and ostensibly those names refer to something like a recipe.[1] If you order a cortado and they hand you a large latte, it would be reasonable to be annoyed. If you order a cortado and they ask you how many ounces of milk you want in it, it would be reasonable to be confused. If you order a cortado and then go add a bunch of milk to it, it would be reasonable for them to be confused.
But nobody’s confused if you ask for a coffee and someone asks if you want milk in it (or room for milk), and nobody’s confused if you get coffee and add milk to it. Or if you don’t. Because we all have a shared usage of the word coffee which does not stipulate additives.
BTW where things can get weird is when there are significant regional differences in certain terms. There was a fun thread on reddit a while back about a US barista who took an order form a British customer who asked for a latte made with “cream” and was shocked when the barista used heavy cream to make it. (After the barista had asked what they thought were sufficient clarifying questions to confirm that the customer didn’t just want whole milk or something else more normal.) The ensuing discussion turned up hugely different expectations from different parts of the anglophone world as to what “cream” means or can possibly mean, including a surprising degree of variation within users from the UK.
Although there is so much variation from shop to shop that the definitional boundaries between espresso drinks can get very fuzzy. ↩︎
Unless you’re doing science or law (and even then often), if people know what you mean when you refer to something, then you’ve used the “name” correctly.
I’m glad you bring that up right away. This is actually the whole reason I reacted. I am really tired of having to hunt down places where I can get reasonably good coffee, and note them so I can return. I often get the wrong drink when ordering “coffee”. As a result, I got the equipment to make it myself. However, it still triggers me when I see people referring to “Milk coffee” as “Coffee”. It is so not the same drink.
It is so common to add milk or sugar to coffee that there is minimal connotation of “black coffee” in the word “coffee” as people use it, at least in US English. For this reason, specifying “black coffee” is much more necessary than “straight vodka” in actual speech.
And, part of the reason why I cannot get “coffee” when ordering literally “coffee”, is this. As you put it, it is so common to add milk or sugar to coffee. Well, there’s nothing wrong with liking milk or sugar (in moderation), but then let’s be honest, that person likes milk and/or sugar, not coffee. It’s just a variation on “hot chocolate”. Which BTW suffers from the exact same issue. Give 99% chocolate to people who say they like chocolate, and check their face: they like sugar and fat, not chocolate. But chocolate isn’t the subject at hand, so let’s focus on coffee.
It’s very funny to want people to invent a whole new word that is the equivalent of white russian for putting milk in coffee.
“Milk coffee”. “Cream coffee”. Wait, did I just invent those!? 🤯
There’s no benefit to it.
- Unambiguous communication
- Logical naming convention, that can be intuited by any foreign person
- Promoting healthier diets, as drinking sugar and/or fat as opposed to eating it, is a leading cause of cardiovascular diseases, obesity and health complications
Just to name a few.
If you want to be pretentious about preferring to drink your coffee a certain way, you can do that anytime. Or maybe you can give it a special name. From now on drinking coffee black is called Asshole Coffee. Put it in the dictionary.
No, “asshole coffee” already has a name, it is “diarrhea”. Besides, it is absolutely not safe to drink, I would not recommend.
It’s a bit different with espresso drinks because those do have specific names that are in common usage and ostensibly those names refer to something like a recipe.
I’ll just refer to your note there. No, it isn’t consistent. There is a similar problem with espresso. I take that you live in a large city, with established customs and where you can reasonably expect “X product” to range from “here” to “there” with variations pertaining to attention to detail, skill, quality of the products, etc. But I do not, and in many places, you simply cannot order a “cortado”. The staff will look at you in a state of partial confusion and will dismiss your request with an explicit list of what they have. Which will likely be “tea, coffee, soda, lemonade, sirup and various alcohols”. In which case ordering the “coffee” will be akin to playing a sort of (white) russian roulette, if I may, but with coffee as a theme.
But nobody’s confused if you ask for a coffee and someone asks if you want milk in it (or room for milk), and nobody’s confused if you get coffee and add milk to it. Or if you don’t.
Yes, people sometimes ask if you want milk in it. In which case I usually order a different drink, because I know their “coffee” will likely not taste good without it.
Because we all have a shared usage of the word coffee which does not stipulate additives.
That is a bug, not a feature. It is actually the whole reason I reacted. We all share a usage of the word “coffee”. But there is probably as many definitions of it as there are people using it, so we clearly do not share the meaning of that term.
This is, BTW, much less of a problem with milk coffee, or cream coffee, since milk or cream has orders of magnitude less variation. It’s always cow milk, usually 1.5 or 3% fat, etc. Maybe it’s slightly different with the word cream, since apparently some people would use plain “heavy” cream.
