Cinnamon - a wondrous spice or not your thing?

[Jeff B]

While we're at it, it also occurred to me that, for all of cinnamon's exotic qualities, it's not really my thing.

I appear to be next to alone in this. Whether it's on oatmeal or on donuts, everyone seems to relish anything cinnamon.

Sure, I can happily gobble up a fresh cinnamon roll but I don't "seek out" cinnamon or crave it as a flavor component.

On the other hand, my beloved Coca-Cola is rumored to have a "cinnamon oil" component to its secret formula. So there are always ironies to be found.

Jeff

[John Treder]

I like cinnamon. Also nutmeg, cloves, allspice, cumin and coriander. I'm not picky! Cinnamon and cloves are very strong (if they're fresh) and need some moderation to keep them from overpowering whatever they're in.

John

[Mike Filigenzi]

Definitely a wondrous spice, in my book. I've always loved cinnamon, whether it was in Hot Tamales, bastilla, Good Earth tea, or cinnamon ice cream. Can't get enough of the stuff.

[Rahsaan]

I'm a fan of cinammon. Have been putting it (along with nutmeg) on my apple sauce, especially since the apples we can still get are not exactly at peak flavor.

I also enjoy cinammon in an Asian-style plum sauce, which thankfully will soon be possible to make again, as the summer fruits pick up.

[Carl Eppig]

We go through a lot of it here as I enjoy it and True Love adores it. Just had some this morning in oatmeal. Yum!

[Jenise]

Love it. A cinnamon roll or cinnamon twist donut? I crave them. But for some reason I don't care for it in teas or candy. And it can be easily overdone for me--I detest commercially made apple pies that have so much cinnamon it's like the apples are there as a vehicle for the cinnamon vs. the other way around.

[Shaji M]

Definitely love it. Love it uncooked as sprinkled on my oatmeal or cooked as part of an Asian/Arabic meal. Where it is cooked, I cannot think of cinnamon by itself but alongside, nutmeg, mace, cloves, pepper etc. I have found interesting nuances between the Saigon variety and the Indian cinnamon, the latter being more on the sweeter side.
-Shaji

[Susan B]

Sure, I can happily gobble up a fresh cinnamon roll but I don't "seek out" cinnamon or crave it as a flavor component.

I am with you, Jeff. I can appreciate cinnamon as a flavor component, especially in savory applications, but as Jenise says,

commercially made apple pies that have so much cinnamon it's like the apples are there as a vehicle for the cinnamon vs. the other way around.

To my taste that goes for oatmeal cookies, pumpkin pie and most teas and candy. I think cinnamon is way overdone by most cooks, including my late mother who relished cinnamon and sugar on toast and cold white rice. Interesting topic, Jeff; I have met very few people who agree with our taste buds.

[Shaji M]

And I forgot to add..cinnamon along with walnuts and honey is heavenly in baklavas or sprinkled on loukoumades..

[Mark Lipton]

I like cinnmamon in certain applications: on certain pastries, especially of the Mexican variety (aka pan dulces), with baked/stewed apples, in apple cider and in a few of the aromatic SE Asian curries and sauces. I'm so-so with it in oatmeal and like it in certain ethnic foods (those SE Asian dishes, some Mexican moles and in Moroccan cooking). In my own cooking, I rarely reach for it, though.

Mark Lipton

[Karen/NoCA]

I love cinnamon and have most of the varieties Penzey's offers. In fact, I love all the warm spices. Cinnamon and nutmeg go into my home made applesauce every fall without fail. I use it in salad dressing, oatmeal, baking, some ethnic dishes, over my fresh fruit every morning, in cottage cheese, my favorite latte is a cinnamon sugar white mocha. I also love in on Japanese sweet potatoes with a little butter sometimes. I put it into a risotto I make in the fall which uses cubed butternut squash - so yummy with a pork roast.

[Jenise]

Karen, on my last trip to Costco I found Vietnamese cinnamon in a giant container. I think they actually called it 'Saigon' or 'Saigonnese', but should be the same thing: $2.49. Not sure it compares perfectly to the Vietnamese cinnamon I've ordered from Penzey's (and in fact, I'm guessing it doesn't as the color is a bit more pale), but for the price I'm pretty happy.

[Karen/NoCA]

Karen, on my last trip to Costco I found Vietnamese cinnamon in a giant container. I think they actually called it 'Saigon' or 'Saigonnese', but should be the same thing: $2.49. Not sure it compares perfectly to the Vietnamese cinnamon I've ordered from Penzey's (and in fact, I'm guessing it doesn't as the color is a bit more pale), but for the price I'm pretty happy.

Vietnamese cinnamon just happens to be my favorite one, love he strong flavor. Will check Costco, since I just ran out, thanks for the info.

[Frank Deis]

I'm a little torn about how to answer the question in the header. I can tell you that it was an exquisite pleasure of my youth to have a hot slice of cinnamon toast, dripping with butter and sweet with sugar. I would cut it into 3 slices, the long way, and savor it as long as possible. Of course the candy Red Hots were cinnamon, and so were those little red pieces of chewing gum. Dentyne.

Michael Ondaatje (who also wrote The English Patient) is a poet born in Sri Lanka, and his poem "The Cinnamon Peeler" is a very beautiful and sensuous poem, I think.

http://www.lifesci.ucsb.edu/~haddock/po ... namon.html

Historically the spice was shipped around the Mediterranean from Alexandria, Egypt, and the origin in Ceylon/Sri Lanka was kept shrouded in secrecy. I think the history in the Wiki ref is fascinating although long.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinnamon

Cinnamon has been known from remote antiquity. It was imported to Egypt as early as 2000 BC, but those who report that it had come from China confuse it with cassia.[5]
The Hebrew Bible makes specific mention of the spice many times: first when Moses is commanded to use both sweet cinnamon (Hebrew: קִנָּמוֹן, qinnāmôn) and cassia in the holy anointing oil;[6] in Proverbs where the lover's bed is perfumed with myrrh, aloes, and cinnamon;[7] and in Song of Solomon, a song describing the beauty of his beloved, cinnamon scents her garments like the smell of Lebanon.[8] Cinnamon was a component of the Ketoret which is used when referring to the consecrated incense described in the Hebrew Bible and Talmud. It was offered on the specialized incense altar in the time when the Tabernacle was located in the First and Second Jerusalem Temples. The ketoret was an important component of the Temple service in Jerusalem.
It was so highly prized among ancient nations that it was regarded as a gift fit for monarchs and even for a god: a fine inscription records the gift of cinnamon and cassia to the temple of Apollo at Miletus.[9] Though its source was kept mysterious in the Mediterranean world for centuries by the middlemen who handled the spice trade, to protect their monopoly as suppliers, cinnamon is native to Sri Lanka, Malabar Coast of India, Burma and Bangladesh.[10] It is also alluded to by Herodotus and other classical writers. It 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.[11]

I think that originally it was used as a perfume, and in foods it originally was used with meats (as it still is in Greece, Morocco, and other places). I like it the most in a sweet context like the cinnamon toast I remember so fondly, and sticky buns etc. I guess considering everything I would have to say "Wondrous Spice."

[Matilda L]

I love cinnamon. On oatmeal, on stewed apples or peaches, on yoghurt, on baked custard... On hot buttered toast with a sprinkle of sugar. Dark hot chocolate with cinnamon and chilli is heavenly. I enjoy it in savoury dishes too - I have a couple of tagine recipes with cinnamon in them.

[Carrie L.]

I like it in/on some things. Others not so much. It's kind of weird. Something I do adore is the cinnamon toast I grew up eating. Tons of butter and a mound of cinnamon sugar on top.
Jeff, Len is with you. He despises it except for a tiny (and I mean TINY) bit in apple pie. He also despises allspice, clove and any other "aromatic" spice.) It severely limits my experimentation with African and Middle Eastern dishes.

[Jeff Grossman/NYC]

Len is with you. He despises it except for a tiny (and I mean TINY) bit in apple pie. He also despises allspice, clove and any other "aromatic" spice.)

Now I'm curious. Does Len eat gingerbread cookies? Pumpkin pie? Fruitcake? How far afield does his preference range?

[Carrie L.]

Len is with you. He despises it except for a tiny (and I mean TINY) bit in apple pie. He also despises allspice, clove and any other "aromatic" spice.)

Now I'm curious. Does Len eat gingerbread cookies? Pumpkin pie? Fruitcake? How far afield does his preference range?

Nope, nope and nope. In fact, can't stand the smell of any of them. When I met him I stopped putting cinnamon in my banana bread and actually found that I like it better "pure" as well.
He does love other spices like cayenne, chili powder, cumin. I use lemon zest a lot and he likes that.

I still make gingerbread and other things with spice just for me. In fact, I make a pumpkin pie every Thanksgiving and am somewhat grateful that he doesn't eat it so I can have the leftovers for breakfast.

[Jeff Grossman/NYC]

Thanks, Carrie. I am always interested to hear about how two people accommodate each others' tastes.

[Mark Lipton]

Thanks, Carrie. I am always interested to hear about how two people accommodate each others' tastes.

Just as an aside, Jean's tolerance for the aromatic spices is far lower than my own. As an undergraduate, she had to isolate eugenol (clove oil) from cloves by an old technique known as steam distillation. She hasn't been able to tolerate the smell of cloves since that time, except in apple cider at Christmas time. (In a comparable experience, I had to isolate cinnamaldehyde from cinnamon, but thought that it was a wonderful experience -- go figger)

Mark Lipton

[Jeff Grossman/NYC]

Mark, is there a chemical resemblance among cinnamon, clove, nutmeg, allspice, et alia?

[Mark Lipton]

Mark, is there a chemical resemblance among cinnamon, clove, nutmeg, allspice, et alia?

More or less, Jeff. Eugenol is the common factor in all but nutmeg, though it's most closely associated with cloves. Nutmeg is the outlier, since its oil contains terpenes like pinene (pine oil), limonene (lemon oil), geraniol (rose oil) and terpineol (lilac).

Mark Lipton

[Jeff Grossman/NYC]

Interesting. That perhaps explains people who are allergic to nutmeg but not the others (I know a few).

[Hoke]

Love cinnamon....but in my estimation an awful lot of people conflate cinnamon with sugar, as in cinnamon sugar. And I think they are attracted to the sugar as much as the cinnamon. Much of the cinnamon we're exposed to (well, cinnamon flavoring, actually) is more sugar than cinnamon, but the two tastes become paired together in the mind, so people think of cinnamon as a "sweet" spice.

It's not. Unless you put it together with a lot of sugar,which also softens up the heat delivery of the spice. Straight cinnamon can be somewhat daunting to someone who thinks cinnamon is that stuff on top of a Cinnabon roll. That stuff is sugar with a small amount of dilute cinnamon powder/flavoring.

One of my favorite uses of cinnamon is some spicy cinnamon dust (something like the Vietnamese that Jenise and Karen alluded to) mixed in with some smoky pepper grind and used as a rim for a cocktail, as in a tamarind margarita. The smoke and pepper and heat, rather than the usual sugar, reacting with the sweet and citrusy and vegetal/herbal of tequila is a remarkable flavor experience.