Shankar wrote on Tue, 08 Apr 2008 03:27:40 GMT:
??>> Certainly in the US, it is cassia which is most often sold
??>> as cinnamon. I saw the same confusion in India, where bags
??>> of cassia were called cinnamom. In the UK I have seen
??>> cassia labelled as cinnamon and vice versa. Waaza
SB> Pretty much everywhere in the world cassia is sold as
SB> cinnamon. Perhaps Sri Lanka is different.
SB> The only actual cinnamon I have seen in living memory was
SB> when a group of Sri Lankan businessmen in the food arena
SB> visited our lab. They handed out cinnamon and decent tea as
SB> smal gifts.
SB> Most people have never seen any actual cinnamon.
SB> In India we don't call cassia cinnamon. We call it
SB> "dalchini" or something close to that in the various
SB> languages. The British taught us thatthe English word is
SB> cinnamon.
SB> It is all their fault.
"Cinnamon" is an accepted English word. By the rules of usage
unfortunately, what the vast majority of English speakers call
"cinnamon" is cinnamon despite what purists may feel about it
:-) I think there was a discussion about this previously and
cassia and cinnamon are from different parts of the plant. I
will have to go to Gernot Katzer's web pages and check what he
says. I have never found him wrong on anything about spices.
However, I wonder where I could find both cassia and cinnamon,
as you describe them, to make a comparison?
James Silverton
Potomac, Maryland
E-mail, with obvious alterations:
not.jim.silverton.at.verizon.not
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