Ingredient

Cinnamon

Most of what is sold as cinnamon is cassia — a related bark that is stronger, hotter and cheaper. It is not a fake, but it is a different spice, and knowing which one you have explains a good deal about why your baking tastes the way it does.

Cassia and Ceylon

Cassia

Thick, hard, dark red-brown bark that curls from one side only. Strong, hot, sweet and assertive. Almost all supermarket cinnamon. The right choice for cinnamon buns, apple pie and anything where you want it to shout.

Ceylon / "true" cinnamon

Thin, brittle, pale tan, made of many fine layers rolled together like a cigar. Delicate, floral, more complex. Better where it is the star and worse where it needs to carry a heavy bake.

Telling them apart

Look at the stick. Cassia is one thick curl you could not snap easily; Ceylon crumbles between your fingers and shows many layers in cross-section.

Ground

Almost impossible to distinguish visually. Ceylon is usually paler and always more expensive.

Sticks or ground

• Sticks for anything liquid and slow — mulled wine, poached fruit, a rice pudding, a curry, a stock. They infuse gently and come out at the end.
• Ground for anything dry or fast — baking, rubs, sprinkling, custards. A stick will not release its flavour into a dough.
• Ground cinnamon fades fast. It is one of the spices that most obviously loses its power in the cupboard. A jar that smells faintly sweet rather than sharply of cinnamon is past it.
• Grinding your own is difficult with cassia — it is genuinely hard bark — and easy with Ceylon, which crumbles.
• Bloom it in fat for savoury cooking, where it opens up in a way that stirring it into liquid does not.

Cinnamon in savoury cooking

In much of Britain and North America cinnamon reads as a dessert spice, which is a narrow view of it. In Moroccan, Turkish, Persian, Mexican, Indian and Greek cooking it is a savoury spice as much as a sweet one, and one of the most useful.

A stick in a lamb tagine, a beef stew, a tomato sauce for pastitsio, a biryani or a mole gives warmth and a faint sweetness that makes the meat taste richer without tasting of pudding. The trick is restraint: one stick, or a quarter-teaspoon of ground, in a dish for four. Enough to notice something and not enough to identify it.

Pairings that work

• Apple, pear, plum and stone fruit — the classics, and cinnamon is doing something real there by masking the sharp edge of the acidity.
• Chocolate and coffee, where it deepens the bitterness rather than sweetening it.
• Lamb and beef, especially with tomato or dried fruit.
• Chickpeas and lentils, where it does the same job it does with meat.
• Citrus, particularly orange.
• Chilli — the Mexican pairing, and a very good one.

Cassia and true cinnamon

Most of what is sold as cinnamon in Britain is cassia, and they are different spices.

Cassia

Dark reddish-brown, thick hard quills that curl from one side only. Strong, sweet, slightly harsh. What most ground cinnamon is.

Ceylon (true) cinnamon

Pale tan, thin brittle layers rolled like a cigar. Milder, more complex, faintly citrusy. More expensive.

Which to use

Cassia stands up to baking and strong flavours. Ceylon is better where cinnamon is the lead note — in a custard, a rice pudding or a delicate cake.

Ground goes stale fast

Like every ground spice. Whole quills keep for a year or more; ground cinnamon fades within months.

A note on coumarin

Cassia contains more of it than Ceylon cinnamon, and there is public health guidance about very high habitual intakes. Ordinary culinary use is a different matter; for anything specific, follow current food-safety advice rather than a cooking site.

Common questions