The cortado

Earlier this year, a large part of the Spanish-speaking world was amused when the UK's Costa Coffee chain appeared to conceive the cortado coffee.

The cortado - a small coffee with a dash of milk - has long been popular in cafes from Spain to Argentina.

Yet sandwich boards outside spotted outside Costa Coffee in April heralded: "The next big thing in coffee."

So what is a cortado?

A cortado is a beverage that consists of espresso coffee mixed with a roughly equal amount of warm milk to reduce the acidity. Importantly, the milk in a cortado is generally not frothy or foamy, but more dense. The word cortado is the past participle of the Spanish verb cortar (to cut), in the sense of "dilute".