Cinnamon in the air

Santa Claus may never have known the ancient trade route - who really knows? - but the Christmas season and the centuries-old spice trade share a common flavor thanks to the land we now know as Sri Lanka, Mike Peters reports.

You can't make gingerbread without it. Or pumpkin pie. Or mulled wine. Or those glazed sweet potatoes that find their way to holiday tables at the end of December.

"It", of course, is cinnamon, a bestseller on grocery shelves. Second globally only to black pepper among the spices, according to US food giant McCormick, cinnamon was once rare indeed, a flavoring so prized that medieval traders literally died to collect the tree bark that produces it.

Foodies know that there are several "kinds" of cinnamon. Cinnamomum verum, the "true cinnamon" from Sri Lanka that is harvested from only the inner bark, made the island once known as Ceylon a hot spot for traders along the early Silk Road. More common varieties with a stronger flavor come from related species, also coveted by traders for centuries, that are often collectively referred to as "cassia" to avoid confusion with the more potent (and expensive) Sri Lankan species.

As early as the 5th century BCE, Herodotus wrote in his Histories that the "Arabians" obtained cassia by traveling to a great lake and gathering branches and bark on the shores. However, those shores were patrolled by huge batlike, winged creatures which screeched horribly and attacked the spice gatherers. In other accounts, giant snakes guarded the treasure groves of these fragrant shrubs. Considerable heroics thus were required of the harvesters, who - as the stories go - left a portion of what they collected as an offering to the sun god who presumably protected them from these predatory guardians. These tales were not merely the embellished accounts of intrepid travelers: They were crafted by traders to help keep the price of the spice high, and to keep away rival seafarers.

More credible lore about cinnamon is strictly culinary.

Cooks in Old Kingdom Egypt valued cinnamon because it helps to preserve food and keep it from going bad, notes Silk Road Gourmet author Laura Kelly. "The Bible mentions cinnamon as one of the spices Moses used," she writes. "In the Middle Ages, a lot of the wealth of the (Persians') Abbasid Empire, and of the Italian republics like Genoa and Venice, came from taxes on cinnamon being brought from India through the Abbasid Empire to Europe and North Africa."

Today the best cinnamon, with a light flavor usually reserved for delicate desserts and baking, is still claimed by Sri Lanka, which had a monopoly on "true" cinnamon for two centuries that was exploited by a succession of colonizers (Dutch, Portuguese and English) until it was smuggled out in the late 1700s and planted in India, Indonesia and elsewhere. The stronger-flavored cassia, meanwhile, is well-suited for candies, curries and rich foods.

"There isn't a single cuisine that doesn't use some form of cinnamon widely," notes the Canadian website Silk Road Spice Merchant. "It's also one of the world's oldest spices - it was traded as currency in ancient China."

While there is a Christmas carol that begins, "Chestnuts roasting on an open fire," the ruling aroma of the season is cinnamon. The sweet spice can turn up anywhere, in holiday pies from apple to pumpkin, in eggnog and hot wassail (a sibling of the mulled German gluhwein), and in Christmas cookies of every description. As you read this, your favorite coffee shop is poking cinnamon sticks into an assembly line of pumpkin lattes and gingerbread mochas.

At bakeries in China's big cities, you can follow your nose to bakeries churning out enticing cinnamon rolls. In the West, about half of the bakery offerings are smothered with gooey white icing, but in China - where sweet tooths are less developed, at least for now - we're usually spared such excess. Baker & Spice shops offer a particularly simple and delicious version in Shanghai and now in Beijing. So does the charity Crazy Bake, a catering operation in China's capital with a kitchen run by mentally impaired bakers who do a booming business for delivery in December.

All cinnamon loses its flavor quickly once ground, so home cooks are advised to buy frequently in smaller amounts.

Contact the writer at michaelpeters@chinadaily.com.cn