bark · sri-lanka · vietnam · indonesia · china
Cinnamon
Cinnamomum verum / Cinnamomum cassia
A bark — peeled, dried, and curled — that the spice trade fought wars over. Two species share the name, and they cook nothing alike.
Two barks, one name — and the assumption that they are the same has been miseducating cooks for four hundred years.
Origin
The bark called cinnamon is two species at minimum. Cinnamomum verum — “true cinnamon” — is from Sri Lanka, and gives the curled, papery, multi-layered quill that breaks easily. Cinnamomum cassia — Chinese cassia — is from southern China, Vietnam, and Indonesia, and gives a thicker, tougher single-layer bark that snaps with effort. American supermarkets sell almost exclusively cassia under the name “cinnamon”; European and Levantine kitchens often mean Ceylon.
The trade is older than written record. Ceylon cinnamon reached Egypt by the second millennium BCE, mentioned in mummy spice traces and the Ebers Papyrus. By the medieval period, Venice and Genoa were fighting Portugal for control of the Sri Lankan trade. The Dutch took Ceylon from the Portuguese in 1640 partly to monopolize this single bark.
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Sensory profile
The dominant compound is cinnamaldehyde — sweet, woody, faintly clove-like. Cassia carries more of it (up to 90% of the volatile oil) and so reads “stronger” in the spice cabinet. Ceylon carries less, balanced with eugenol, linalool, and a delicate flowery top note. Cassia is also higher in coumarin, which has a hay-sweet smell but is mildly hepatotoxic in large daily doses — most regulatory bodies set conservative limits on cassia consumption.
The kitchen consequence: cassia is the bark for short, hot cooking (mulled wine, baked apples, cinnamon rolls) where you want a punch of cinnamaldehyde. Ceylon is the bark for long, gentle cooking (Persian khoresh, Mexican mole, Indonesian rendang) where you want layered aromatics and not a face-full of single-note sweetness.
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In the kitchen
The bark divides cuisines along an unexpected line: cinnamon as sweet (American baking, Scandinavian pastry) versus cinnamon as savoury (Levantine meat stews, Mexican mole, Vietnamese pho). The savoury programs almost universally prefer Ceylon — its quieter, more complex profile holds up across hours of simmering. The sweet programs are flexible, but the bakers who care use Ceylon as well.
Indonesian kaya — the coconut-egg jam used on toast — relies on cassia. Persian zereshk polo uses Ceylon. The two barks are not interchangeable, and most recipes that refuse to specify are written by people who do not know the difference.
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How to handle
Buy whole sticks rather than ground. Ceylon sticks are noticeably softer and easier to break with bare hands; cassia is rigid and dark. Ground cinnamon loses its volatile oils within months — buy small quantities, store airtight away from heat. For long stews, drop a whole stick in and remove it before serving. For baking, freshly grind from a stick using a coffee grinder dedicated to spices.
References
- Dalby, Andrew. Dangerous Tastes: The Story of Spices (University of California Press, 2000) — the trade history.
- McGee, Harold. On Food and Cooking (Scribner, 2004) — cinnamaldehyde / coumarin chemistry.
- Wright, Clifford A. A Mediterranean Feast (William Morrow, 1999) — Levantine cinnamon-meat tradition.