Cinnamon is a spice obtained from the inner bark of several tree species from the genus Cinnamomum. Cinnamon is used mainly as an aromatic condiment and flavouring additive in a wide variety of cuisines, sweet and savoury dishes, breakfast cereals, snack foods, teas, and traditional foods. The aroma and flavour of cinnamon derive from its essential oil and principal component, cinnamaldehyde, as well as numerous other constituents including eugenol.

Cinnamon is the name for several species of trees and the commercial spice products that some of them produce. All are members of the genus Cinnamomum in the family Lauraceae. Only a few Cinnamomum species are grown commercially for spice. Cinnamomum verum (AKA C. zeylanicum), known as "Ceylon cinnamon" after its origins in Sri Lanka (formerly Ceylon), is considered to be "true cinnamon",^[1] but most cinnamon in international commerce is derived from four other species, usually and more correctly referred to as "cassia": C. burmannii (Indonesian cinnamon or Padang cassia), C. cassia (Chinese cinnamon or Chinese cassia), C. loureiroi (Saigon cinnamon or Vietnamese cassia), and the less common C. citriodorum (Malabar cinnamon).^[1][2][3] In 2018, Indonesia and China produced 70% of the world's supply of cinnamon, Indonesia producing nearly 40% and China 30%.^[4]

Etymology

The English word "cinnamon", attested in English since the 15th century, deriving from the Ancient Greek κιννάμωμον (kinnámōmon, later κίνναμον : kínnamon), via Latin and medieval French intermediate forms. The Greek was borrowed from a Phoenician word, which was similar to the related Hebrew word קנמון (qinnāmōn).^[5][6]

The name "cassia", first recorded in late Old English from Latin, ultimately derives from the Hebrew word קציעה qetsīʿāh, a form of the verb קצע qātsaʿ, "to strip off bark".^[7][8]

Early Modern English also used the names canel and canella, similar to the current names of cinnamon in several other European languages, which are derived from the Latin word cannella, a diminutive of canna, "tube", from the way the bark curls up as it dries.^[9]

History

Cinnamon has been known from remote antiquity.^[10] It was imported to Egypt as early as 2000 BC, but those who reported that it had come from China had confused it with Cinnamomum cassia, a related species.^[3] Cinnamon was so highly prized among ancient nations that it was regarded as a gift fit for monarchs^[10] and even for a deity; a fine inscription records the gift of cinnamon and cassia to the temple of Apollo at Miletus.^[11] Its source was kept a trade secret in the Mediterranean world for centuries by those in the spice trade, in order to protect their monopoly as suppliers.^[12]

Cinnamomum verum, which translates from Latin as "true cinnamon", is native to India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Myanmar.^[13] Cinnamomum cassia (cassia) is native to China. Related species, all harvested and sold in the modern era as cinnamon, are native to Vietnam ("Saigon cinnamon"), Indonesia and other southeast Asian countries with warm climates.

In Ancient Egypt, cinnamon was used to embalm mummies.^[14] From the Ptolemaic Kingdom onward, Ancient Egyptian recipes for kyphi, an aromatic used for burning, included cinnamon and cassia. The gifts of Hellenistic rulers to temples sometimes included cassia and cinnamon.

The first Greek reference to κασία : kasía is found in a poem by Sappho in the 7th century BC. According to Herodotus, both cinnamon and cassia grew in Arabia, together with incense, myrrh and labdanum, and were guarded by winged serpents.^[15] Herodotus, Aristotle and other authors named Arabia as the source of cinnamon; they recounted that giant "cinnamon birds" collected the cinnamon sticks from an unknown land where the cinnamon trees grew and used them to construct their nests.^[15]: 111

Pliny the Elder wrote that cinnamon was brought around the Arabian peninsula on "rafts without rudders or sails or oars", taking advantage of the winter trade winds.^[16] He also mentioned cassia as a flavouring agent for wine,^[17] and that the tales of cinnamon being collected from the nests of cinnamon birds was a traders' fiction made up to charge more. However, the story remained current in Byzantium as late as 1310.^[18]

According to Pliny the Elder, a Roman pound (327 grams [11.5 oz]) of cassia, cinnamon (serichatum), cost up to 1,500 denarii, the wage of fifty months' labour.^[19] Diocletian's Edict on Maximum Prices^[20] from 301 AD gives a price of 125 denarii for a pound of cassia, while an agricultural labourer earned 25 denarii per day. Cinnamon was too expensive to be commonly used on funeral pyres in Rome, but the Emperor Nero is said to have burned a year's worth of the city's supply at the funeral for his wife Poppaea Sabina in AD 65.

Middle Ages

Through the Middle Ages, the source of cinnamon remained a mystery to the Western world. From reading Latin writers who quoted Herodotus, Europeans had learned that cinnamon came up the Red Sea to the trading ports of Egypt, but where it came from was less than clear. When the Sieur de Joinville accompanied his king, Louis IX of France to Egypt on the Seventh Crusade in 1248, he reported—and believed—what he had been told: that cinnamon was fished up in nets at the source of the Nile out at the edge of the world (i.e., Ethiopia). Marco Polo avoided precision on the topic.^[22]

The first mention that the spice grew in Sri Lanka was in Zakariya al-Qazwini's Athar al-bilad wa-akhbar al-'ibad ("Monument of Places and History of God's Bondsmen") about 1270.^[23] This was followed shortly thereafter by John of Montecorvino in a letter of about 1292.^[24]

Indonesian rafts transported cinnamon directly from the Moluccas to East Africa (see also Rhapta), where local traders then carried it north to Alexandria in Egypt.^[25][26][27] Venetian traders from Italy held a monopoly on the spice trade in Europe, distributing cinnamon from Alexandria. The disruption of this trade by the rise of other Mediterranean powers, such as the Mamluk sultans and the Ottoman Empire, was one of many factors that led Europeans to search more widely for other routes to Asia.^[28]

Early Modern Period

During the 1500s, Ferdinand Magellan was searching for spices on behalf of Spain, and in the Philippines found Cinnamomum mindanaense, which was closely related to C. zeylanicum, the cinnamon found in Sri Lanka. This cinnamon eventually competed with Sri Lankan cinnamon, which was controlled by the Portuguese.^[29]

In 1638, Dutch traders established a trading post in Sri Lanka, took control of the manufactories by 1640, and expelled the remaining Portuguese by 1658. "The shores of the island are full of it," a Dutch captain reported, "and it is the best in all the Orient. When one is downwind of the island, one can still smell cinnamon eight leagues out to sea."^[30] The Dutch East India Company continued to overhaul the methods of harvesting in the wild and eventually began to cultivate its own trees.

In 1767, Lord Brown of the British East India Company established Anjarakkandy Cinnamon Estate near Anjarakkandy in the Kannur district of Kerala, India. It later became Asia's largest cinnamon estate. The British took control of Ceylon from the Dutch in 1796.

Species

A number of species are often sold as cinnamon:^[34]

·         Cinnamomum cassia (cassia or Chinese cinnamon, the most common commercial type in the USA)

·         C. burmannii (Korintje, Padang cassia, or Indonesian cinnamon)

·         C. loureiroi (Saigon cinnamon, Vietnamese cassia, or Vietnamese cinnamon)

·         C. verum (Sri Lanka cinnamon, Ceylon cinnamon or Cinnamomum zeylanicum)

·         C. citriodorum (Malabar cinnamon)

Cassia induces a strong, spicy flavour and is often used in baking, especially associated with cinnamon rolls, as it handles baking conditions well. Among cassia, Chinese cinnamon is generally medium to light reddish-brown in colour, hard and woody in texture, and thicker (2–3 mm (0.079–0.118 in) thick), as all of the layers of bark are used. Ceylon cinnamon, using only the thin inner bark, has a lighter brown colour and a finer, less dense, and more crumbly texture. It is subtle and more aromatic in flavour than cassia and it loses much of its flavour during cooking.

The barks of the species are easily distinguished when whole, both in macroscopic and microscopic characteristics. Ceylon cinnamon sticks (quills) have many thin layers and can easily be made into powder using a coffee or spice grinder, whereas cassia sticks are much harder. Indonesian cinnamon is often sold in neat quills made up of one thick layer, capable of damaging a spice or coffee grinder. Saigon cinnamon (C. loureiroi) and Chinese cinnamon (C. cassia) are always sold as broken pieces of thick bark, as the bark is not supple enough to be rolled into quills.