[Sca-cooks] Cinnamon

[Philip & Susan Troy]

>Since cassia (bought from the store) closes my bronchial tubes (think asthma
>attack), I've been somewhat reluctant to experiment and see if "true"
>cinnamon sets off the reaction. Understandably, I hope! Recently, I was
>serving a feast that a dish smelled absolutely wonderful, and seeing the
>little brown flecks, I asked the Cook for the ingredients. Yes, cinnamon was
>on the list, but since it IS January, and I'd been allergy free, thereby
>having fully open bronchii I took a chance. BAD idea. This particular dish
>didn't agree with my palate OR my bronchii. Darn. I was able to get outside
>where the shock of the cold air (I left my inhaler at home......mundane,
>right? NEVER again) was enough to keep things tolerable. M'Lord husband told
>me that in the future, no inhaler, no cinnamon. Period. *Sigh* I agree, it
>isn't worth the risk, even if the dish smelled really good.

Understandable, but then it sounds like asking if there was a viable
substitute is a bit of a loaded question, or at least one with a
foregone conclusion...

>  > 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.
>
>Agreed, I wasn't suggesting that a head cook change her plans on my account.

Me neither. I was just saying that you could substitute for your own
use (in theory, assuming that you didn't have a bad reaction to, say,
true cinnamon). And who knows, if you had success with it, there's no
really compelling reason other than price and availability, perhaps,
for a head cook not to use it if doing so is both a more suitable
period option _and_ it helps you. The other aspect of the above is
simply that while the two products aren't remotely identical, they
must have some similarities for such a broad-scale substitution to be
made.

>Well, I prepare very little at home that needs cinnamon. Cinnamon rolls, cuz
>the kids just love them. Oh well, can't win them all. Most of the time if a
>recipe calls for cinnamon, I just leave it out. Nobody here misses it.

It sort of seems as if finding a substitute really isn't as important
to you as I had first thought. Which isn't a problem...

>Properly worded: Is there a particular reason that cinnamon was used so
>heavily in the Middle Ages?

It was an exotic import in the eyes of European cooks and diners, and
therefore, especially for people who often did not travel too far
from the spot where they were born. It was also recommended by many
physicians (most of whose training originated in the Middle East,
which medical theories in turn seem to have originated in China, not
too far from the lands to which cinnamon is native) as a dietary
supplement needed for proper digestion and humoral balance. This
applies to other eastern spices as well. If cinnamon is mentioned in
recipes more often than, say, cubebs but less often than pepper, it
may simply indicate availability.

>Next question: Why does every modern recipe that has apples in it have
>cinnamon in it?

You mean the ones that don't call for cloves and ginger? ;-) One
reason is, of course, the nummers factor, but another is, as
suggested above, that cinnamon was probably considered an exotic and
festive addition to winter holiday foods, and since apples keep
pretty well over at least part of the winter, and become more
important as other fruits and vegetables vanish from the seasonal
diet, combining them with exotic spices seems natural enough.

A lot of the apple recipes calling for cinnamon are also of more or
less American Colonial tradition, and while cinnamon may have been
easier for American colonial types to obtain than for the average
medieval European cook, the reasons for doing so still existed
(humoral medicine was practiced by Europeans until at least the early
nineteenth century, in one form or another). And while we may not
consider the reasons why such foods and combinations have become
traditonal, they seem to have done so.

Adamantius