Ace wrote on Tue, 08 Apr 2008 15:09:26 +0200:
??>> 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.
??>> "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?
A> I know that I've got both at home, both sourced in the UK,
A> and they're quite different. The one labelled cinnamon is
A> the same as the stuff I can find in the US and in the rest
A> of Europe, called Cannelle or Zimt or whatever, and much
A> used in Apple pie, mulled wint et al. The other one,
A> labelled Cassia, is vaguely similar but much less aromatic,
A> and I thought it was actually from a different plant.
A> I don't see where, or how, this confusion has crept in, as
A> cinnamon is cinnamon the world over, as far as I can tell.
I went to a spice dealer (Penzey's near where I live) and was
given a very extensive tutorial on varieties of "cinnamon",
including smelling the ground spices in bulk and handling the
bark. I could not decide which I preferred but I could tell the
differences even if I was recovering from a cold. I'm going to
have to try using both separately in a recipe that depends on
"cinnamon" (which I am told is usually cassia in the US and
Mexico, if not in Europe.) According to Gernot Katzer (
http://www.uni-graz.at/~katzer/engl/
), even if they are
different, they are related: Cinnamonum Cassia and Cinnamonum
Zeylanica.
James Silverton
Potomac, Maryland
E-mail, with obvious alterations:
not.jim.silverton.at.verizon.not
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