Cinnamon

Cinnamon (Figure 23) is the inner bark of the tree Cinnamomum, belonging to the Laurels family, and typically grows in tropical or subtropical climates. It is used as a condiment and as a spice in both sweet and savoury dishes, and as a flavouring in some drinks.

C. verum is native to India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Myanmar. The main producers of cinnamon today are Indonesia, China, Vietnam and Sri Lanka.

Cinnamaldehyde was detected in ten out of twenty-seven Phoenician flasks from archaeological sites in Israel, the flasks dating from the eleventh and ninth centuries BCE.⁹ As the plant only grew in South and Southeast Asia at that time, this suggests that trading was established between the Levant and Asia around 3,000 years ago.

The ancient Greeks certainly imported cinnamon, which was one of the medicinal plants that Hippocrates (460–377 BCE) referred to in his treatises.

Herodotus, in the fifth century BCE, described the use of cassia in the ancient Egyptian embalming process for filling the abdominal cavity, together with myrrh ‘and every other sort of spicery’. Herodotus also describes Arabia as being the only country that produced cinnamon and cassia. He further described the (rather unlikely) way cinnamon was obtained:

Great birds, they say, bring the sticks which we Greeks, taking the word from the Phoenicians, call cinnamon, and carry them up into the air to make their nests.

Theophrastus differentiated between cinnamon and cassia, proving they were already well known and important in the West by the fourth century BCE. Apicius used malabathrum (leaves of C. temala) in laser (or silphium) sauce, in boiled lobster and shellfish dishes. Both cinnamon and cassia are also included in De Materia Medica of 50–70 CE.¹¹

The cassia used in Egyptian embalming may have been derived from China, where there is record of use in the Ch’u Ssu (Elegies of Ch’u), written in the fourth century BCE.¹² It was also included in the earlier Chinese herbal of Shennong and others.

For many centuries, Arab merchants maintained a monopoly on oriental spices by feeding disinformation and pretending that cassia and cinnamon came from Africa rather than the Far East, thus discouraging importers from making direct contact with the true sources. Pliny showed as far back as the first century CE that the fanciful stories of Herodotus, etc., were fabrications aimed at keeping prices high, though the disinformation was to continue and even Pliny got it wrong – he believed that cinnamon grew in Ethiopia. Its price was 12 denarii per lb.¹³ By the second century CE, the spice route from the Far East to Europe was already established, with caravans regularly leaving the Chinese city of Luoyang laden with ginger, cassia and cinnamon.¹⁴ After the fall of Rome, spices became much more expensive and scarcer.

Ibn Khordadbeh (a ninth-century Persian geographer and official) described the journey of Radhanite Jewish merchants from western Europe to Egypt then to India and China via Arabia in his Book of Roads and Kingdoms. They returned to Constantinople with various Eastern products, including cinnamon:

They transport from the West eunuchs, female slaves, boys, silk, castor, marten and other furs, and swords. They take ship (from France), on the Western Sea, and steer for Farama (Pelusium in Egypt’s nile delta). There they load their goods on camel-back and go by land to al-Kolzum (Suez), in five days journey over a distance of twenty-five parasangs. They embark in the East Sea (Red Sea) and sail from al-Kolzum to al-Jar and al-Jeddah, then they go to Sind, India, and China. On their return from China they carry back musk, aloes, camphor, cinnamon, and other products of the Eastern countries to al-Kolzum and bring them back to Farama, where they again embark on the Western Sea. Some make sail for Constantinople to sell their goods to the Romans; others go to the palace of the King of the Franks …¹⁶

The trade in spices grew rapidly in the second half of the twelfth century (revitalised by the Crusades) and then in 1245 Robert de Montpelier opened London’s first pharmacy, selling medicines, spices and confections. In 1250, John Adrian was paid over £54 for dates, gingerbread, cinnamon and other spices – a large sum of money in those times.¹⁷ Alice de Bryene purchased 2lb of cinnamon in 1418, but she was catering for a large household – the price was 19d per lb, but from the mid-fifteenth century prices were on an upward trend.¹⁸ Cinnamon (or cannel in Latin) appears frequently in The Forme of Cury (1390) in both savoury and sweet dishes, and also in the spiced wine hypocras. It became increasingly popular in European medieval and early modern recipes.

Sri Lanka was long considered the source of the very best cinnamon. Jan van Linschoten commented in 1596:

the places where Cinamon groweth, is most and best in the Iland of Seylon, wherein there is whole woods full of [Cinamon trees]: in the coast of Malabar there groweth likewise great store and some woods of Cinamon, but not half so good and lesser trees … The Cinamon of the Iland of Seylon is the best and finest and is [at the least] three times dearer in the price.¹⁹

Cinnamon reached the Island of Guadeloupe by 1762 and other Caribbean islands thereafter. By 1800, cinnamon was no longer such an expensive and rare commodity, as it had begun to be cultivated in other parts of the world.

Cinnamon toast and cinnamon rolls are common sweet snacks in Europe and America. It is probably the most common baking spice today.

Cinnamon has historically been used in many kinds of medicine: Dioscorides prescribed cinnamon bark in hot rum for colds and the use of cinnamon or cassia in treating many other complaints, and the Chinese have used it as a cure for flatulence. It was one of several spices used by medieval and early modern physicians to keep plague at bay. Today some believe it has use in lowering blood pressure, alleviating gastro-intestinal problems, helping control diabetes and various other disorders, though this remains unproven.