Greek Frappé: How to Make the Shaken Iced Instant Coffee

A Greek frappé is instant coffee, sugar and a little cold water shaken into a thick, light-brown foam, then topped up with ice, cold water and, if you like, milk. To make one, shake two teaspoons of instant coffee with sugar to taste and three tablespoons of cold water for about half a minute, pour it into a tall glass, add ice and top it up slowly, so the foam rises to the top.

It is one of the few great coffee drinks built on instant coffee, and the reason it works is the same reason it could never be made with filter coffee: instant coffee foams.

The recipe

1. Put the coffee, sugar and three tablespoons of cold water in a shaker, a jar with a tight lid, or a tall glass.
2. Shake hard for 20–30 seconds, or whisk with a frappé mixer or a handheld milk frother, until the mixture turns into a thick, pale-brown foam that holds its shape.
3. Add ice to a tall glass and pour in the foam.
4. Top up slowly with cold water, or a mix of water and milk. The liquid slides under the foam and lifts it to the top of the glass.
5. Serve with a straw. Greeks drink a frappé through the straw from below the foam, which many find unpleasantly bitter on its own.

Ordering it the Greek way

A frappé is ordered by sweetness. For the usual two spoons of coffee:

• Sketos (plain) — no sugar.
• Metrios (medium) — two spoons of sugar.
• Glykos (sweet) — four spoons of sugar.

Milk is added only if you ask: me gala means with milk, horis gala without. The milk is traditionally evaporated milk, and in Cyprus frappés are sometimes topped up with milk instead of water.

Why instant coffee foams

Shake filter coffee and you get a thin, short-lived froth. Shake instant coffee with a splash of water and you get a dense foam that lasts for the whole drink. The differences are oil and concentration.

Oil. Coffee foams are stabilised by the same family of compounds in every brew: in their review of espresso foam, Illy and Navarini identified proteins, polysaccharides and melanoidins — the brown compounds formed during roasting — as the components that hold coffee bubbles together, and lipids as the main thing that breaks them. Spray-dried instant coffee contains almost no oil; the USDA lists instant coffee powder at just 0.5 g of fat per 100 g. Frappés made with freshly brewed coffee or freeze-dried instant, both of which carry more oil, produce only short-lived foams.

Concentration. Two grams of instant coffee dissolved in 45 ml of water makes a solution of about 4% coffee solids — several times stronger than filter coffee, and with sugar added, thicker still. That thickness slows the drainage of liquid from between the bubbles, which is what makes a foam collapse. Depending on the size of the bubbles and the amount of sugar, water drains out of a frappé's foam over about 2–10 minutes, leaving a nearly solid foam that then slowly dissipates. A hand shaker makes finer, longer-lasting bubbles than a quick stir.

Sugar helps for the same reason: it thickens the liquid between the bubbles. That is also the principle behind dalgona coffee, which uses equal parts instant coffee, sugar and hot water and whips them into a foam stiff enough to spoon.

Where the frappé came from

The famous story is precise. At the 1957 Thessaloniki International Fair, Nestlé's representative Giannis Dritsas was demonstrating a new chocolate drink for children, made instantly by shaking it with milk in a shaker. His employee, Dimitris Vakondios, wanted his usual instant coffee during a break, could not find hot water, and shook the coffee with cold water and ice cubes instead.

It may not be the whole truth. Nikos Bakounakis questioned the story in 2006, and in 2013 the magazine Gastronomos pointed to Nestlé newspaper advertisements from before the 1957 fair already promoting "Nescafé frappé". A 1951 Greek film even includes a line about frappé coffee being made with a shaker at an Athens patisserie. What is not in doubt is what came next: the frappé spread through Greece, Nestlé's heavy marketing in the 1980s made it a national habit, and it became one of the most popular coffees in Greece and Cyprus and a fixture of outdoor café life. For years it was simply called a "Nescafé frappé".

The name comes from the French frappé — literally "struck", figuratively "shaken" — used for drinks chilled with ice. Iced coffees called café frappé appear in 19th-century recipe books, long before the Greek version.

Caffeine and calories

At the USDA's figure of about 31 mg of caffeine per gram of instant coffee powder — and about 1 g per teaspoon — a two-teaspoon frappé carries roughly 63 mg of caffeine, less than a typical double espresso. Three teaspoons bring it to about 94 mg. The instant coffee guide explains how instant is made and why its caffeine varies.

The calories are almost all in what you add: each teaspoon of sugar is about 16 kcal, and a splash of milk a little more. A sketos frappé without milk has fewer than 10 kcal.

Variations

• Freddo espresso and freddo cappuccino — Greece's newer iced coffees, made with fresh espresso rather than instant. See the freddo espresso guide.
• Frappé with ice cream — some cafés add a scoop of vanilla ice cream in place of the milk.
• With liqueur — beach bars sometimes add Kahlúa or Irish cream.
• Koutalatos — stirred with a spoon rather than shaken, when no shaker is to hand; the texture is different, and strictly it is not a frappé.
• Without a shaker — a handheld milk frother in a tall glass makes the foam in seconds.

For other cold coffees, see the iced coffee guide and the iced latte guide.