Regarding store cinnamon, please read the following article from the Charleston WV Sunday Gazette-Mail on Oct. 29, 2006
http://wvgazette.com/section/Food/2006102626?pt=0
The Main Ingredient
Not really cinnamon: Commonly mislabeled spice still makes for good flavor
By Robert J. Byers and Tara Tuckwiller
Staff writers
CINNAMON isn’t really cinnamon — cooks have been bantering about that for years. What we’ve called “cinnamon” for decades in the U.S. is really cassia, the bark of a similar tree. Lately, chefs have been tracking down the elusive true cinnamon, insisting that there’s nothing like the subtle, floral complexity of the real deal.
But now, “gourmet” cinnamons are showing up on grocery store shelves. Are they true cinnamon? Do they really taste any better than the stuff in your spice rack? We vowed to find out with our favorite ultra-scientific method — the blind taste test.
First, we had to sort through all those gourmet cinnamon names to see what they really meant:
Saigon cinnamon. The supermarket spice giant McCormick just sent us a bottle of this, along with a news release touting it as “the most coveted and exotic cinnamon available.” Oh, so it’s the real stuff? Nope. That’s Ceylon cinnamon (Saigon, sounds like Ceylon — marketing minds at work there).
This is cassia from Vietnam. Penzeys, another spice company, calls it simply “Vietnamese cinnamon,” adding that it is “the highest quality, strongest cinnamon available in America today.” OK, we’ll try it.
Chinese cinnamon. This is cassia from China. “Our best seller,” Penzeys says. “Strong and spicier than Korintje.” Korintje?
Or Korintji, as McCormick spells it. This is what’s on your spice rack. It is cassia from Indonesia, named after a mountain there where cassia grows wild. It has half the volatile oil of “Saigon” cinnamon, McCormick says.
But even within Korintje, there are subcategories. Penzeys says it stocks grade-A Korintje. Grades B and C are what you usually find in the supermarket.
On to the test. We compared ordinary “cinnamon” (cassia, that is) with the premium “Saigon” from McCormick. First, a sniff test: The Saigon definitely had a stronger, more lively aroma. But Rob thought the ordinary cassia smelled “like candy cinnamon,” while I thought the Saigon smelled that way.
Now, the taste test. We mixed 1/4 teaspoon of each cinnamon with a tablespoon of sugar and tasted blindly. We also dipped fritti, or simple fried dough (see today’s recipe) into each sugar and blind-tasted that. And …
It was a draw. Neither of us could taste any difference between the fritti, and I couldn’t even tell a difference when I tasted the cinnamon sugar by itself. Rob pronounced one cinnamon-sugar sample “more cinnamony” — and it turned out to be the ordinary cinnamon.
The verdict? We won’t rush to replace our cinnamon. We buy ours, like most of our spices, at International Groceries and Spices in Kanawha City. It’s labeled just plain cinnamon, but the ground cinnamon and pieces of cinnamon bark both have a nice, deep aroma and flavor we like.
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Even if it is cassia. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. The Cinnamomum cassia is just a cousin of true cinnamon, Cinnamomum zeylanicum. There’s nothing unnatural about it, nothing inherently inferior.
You can special-order true cinnamon from Penzeys or other spice purveyors, and try it for yourself. You might decide there’s nothing like the nostalgic appeal of good old-fashioned cassia.
The Main Tip
We normally buy whole spices and grind them ourselves, but cinnamon is the exception. Really, it’s because we find cinnamon bark a pain to grind, and we usually want a nice fine grind for pastries, etc. But although the rough cinnamon bark we buy (for mulled cider and so forth) has good flavor, those neatly quilled supermarket cinnamon sticks actually have less flavor than pre-ground cinnamon. That’s because the sticks come from the upper part of the tree, and the rough bark (which is usually ground before sale) comes from the thicker, more flavorful lower bark.
