[Sca-cooks] Cinnamon

[Philip & Susan Troy]

>Ok, so I've been looking at recipes till my eyes cross (and reading in some
>of the original texts also--hey that useless class in early British Lit came
>in handy after all, LOL) and a vast number of recipes call for cinnamon.
>Now, I have fondness for breathing. (Imagine that!) Cinnamon interferes with
>particular addiction, LOL! Being allergic to cinnamon means I can't have my
>favorite mundane foods, nevermind period foods. At the investiture of our
>new Baron & Baroness, I couldn't eat a significant portion of the feast (but
>my lord husband assured me it was wonderful, but definitely to laden with
>the offending spice for me to eat.) There was plenty for me to eat, as her
>Excellency can verify! Is there a reason so much cinnamon was used? Is there
>a substitute spice that could be used?

It seems as if, as with the lady allergic to onions, you just lucked
out and ran into a feast that called for a.lot of cinnamon. While
there are a huge number of medieval European dishes that call for
cinnamon, there are many that don't.  I don't recall using any at the
12th Night feast I worked on a few weeks ago.

Now, the question is, are you allergic to both cassia (which is what
a lot of what is sold as cinnamon actually is) _and_ true cinnamon,
or one, or the other?

If you can eat one but not the other, you could easily substitute.
It's not exactly the same, but there has to be a reasonable
resemblance for most people's palates for the substitution to be made
on such an industrial scale.

If you're allergic to both, there are certainly plenty of dishes that
don't call for cinnamon. You can check any of a scad of available
recipe sources to get an idea, and either cook them, or make
suggestions regarding them to your feast cooks, or better yet, both:
try them out and _then_ discuss them with your feast cooks.

Adamantius