Dalgona coffee: the drink came with homework.

The difficult part was believing the mixture would eventually change. Instant coffee, sugar and a little water did not immediately look like the thick foam in the picture. If you were beating it by hand, there was time to wonder whether you had misunderstood something.

Then it lightened and thickened. You could spoon it over milk, admire the separate layers and consider which side of the glass looked best in a photograph.

Dalgona coffee gave the spring of 2020 a kitchen project with a visible result. For people with the ingredients and time, making the drink could occupy rather more of the afternoon than drinking it.

The name had travelled further than the technique

The Times of India’s April 2020 feature (opens in a new tab) traced the name through a January Korean television appearance. Actor Jung Il-woo tried coffee in Macau and compared its appearance with dalgona candy.

By the Indian lockdown, recipe videos were explaining how to make it at home. Kabita’s Kitchen posted a Hindi tutorial on 31 March; the same report noted versions in Malayalam, Tamil and Marathi. You could encounter an unfamiliar name and find instructions in a familiar language.

The beating could feel familiar too. Indian beaten coffee, or phenti hui coffee, already involved working coffee and sugar into a froth. In his 10 April home-kitchen demonstration (opens in a new tab), chef Anuj Wadhawan made that connection explicitly.

Recognising the technique didn’t make the route to this craze any less interesting. A new name and presentation had given people a reason to try, explain or argue about a preparation some already knew.

The clear glass was doing useful work

The separate foam layer was a big part of the appeal. The Times of India feature distinguished the presentation from beaten coffee with milk mixed through it, while Wadhawan’s demonstration used cold milk beneath the whipped mixture.

You could see the intended result before tasting it. A clear glass showed how much foam you had managed and whether it was staying on top. Even someone who had no intention of making a drink could understand what the person posting the photograph was pleased about.

Watching a tutorial could leave you checking the kitchen. The ingredients might already be there, which made trying it a fairly manageable decision. You didn’t have to produce a complicated cake to have something worth showing at the end.

Of course, the photograph could say very little about whether you liked the finished coffee. Layers were easier to assess from a screen than sweetness. At some point you still had to stir the carefully arranged drink.

At least this task had an end

Lockdown didn’t give everyone spare time or a well-stocked kitchen. For those able to try it, though, the coffee offered an undertaking small enough to finish. The mixture changed as you worked; eventually there was a glass to put down.

That helps explain the appeal without turning a drink into an answer to the year. An ordinary afternoon could contain a little effort and something completed. You could send a picture, compare it with somebody else’s attempt and get on with drinking it.

The recipe is still available to repeat. If you do, take the picture before mixing. It takes considerably less time to undo those layers than it did to make the foam.