Cinnamon

There is cinnamon and there is true cinnamon. Most of what the world calls cinnamon is cassia, a coarser bark from a different tree. True cinnamon is thinner, sweeter and more refined, and it comes from one island. Its oil is one of the warmest materials I own.

What cinnamon is

Cinnamon bark oil is steam distilled from the inner bark of Cinnamomum verum, the true cinnamon tree. The bark is peeled from young shoots, dried into the familiar quills and distilled. The oil is dominated by cinnamaldehyde, the molecule that gives cinnamon its sweet, hot, unmistakable character, supported by eugenol and a trace of linalool that softens it. It is powerful, used in small amounts, and one of the few spices that reads as both warm and luminous.

Where our cinnamon comes from

Ours comes from Sri Lanka, the island once called Ceylon and the original home of true cinnamon. The tree grows in the humid, sandy lowlands of the southwest coast, and the bark has been harvested and hand rolled there for centuries by peelers whose craft passes from parent to child. Sri Lankan cinnamon is finer and sweeter than cassia and has a delicate floral edge that cassia lacks entirely. The oil distilled from it carries that refinement: heat, yes, but heat with grace.

How cinnamon smells

Sweet cinnamon with spicy, warm, woody notes. It is hot and bright at first, then softens into a rounded, almost creamy warmth with a faint clove and floral facet that keeps it from becoming purely edible.

Cinnamon in our chapters

• IHayalThe Crown · in the heart

  In Hayal it sits in the heart beside neroli and geranium, a warm thread that runs from the spiced opening to the resinous base.

• VIImpériale OudThe First Root · in the opening

  In Impériale Oud it is the fire of the opening, set against litsea and thyme, and it announces the crimson rose that follows.

• VIISultanat OudThe Deep Roots · in the opening

  In Sultanat Oud it joins cardamom in the opening, the two spices of the old caravan routes above the oud and sandalwood.

A note from the atelier

Cinnamon is the material I use most carefully. A trace is warmth; a little more is a kitchen. In Impériale Oud I let it burn slightly brighter than anywhere else, because that chapter is about a rose that grew in heat.

Questions about cinnamon