Cinnamon – Taxonomic, Chemotaxonomic and Sensory Differentiation

Cinnamon is among the oldest spices in the world. Traders from the East probably began bringing cinnamon to Egypt around 1500 BC. Originally used in embalming and incense, cinnamon's culinary attributes and appeal were discovered later, particularly during the Greek and Roman periods. Today, cinnamon is one of the most popular spices; it is widely used in cereal, bakery and dessert products, and is increasingly found as a flavoring component in main courses and side dishes as well.

At the same time, cinnamon's purported health benefits, e.g., antioxidant, antimicrobial and antidiabetic, have heightened interest in this spice and led to a considerable amount of research and increased sales in the past decade. Unfortunately, a substantial amount of the research reported on cinnamon does not provide thorough documentation of the source and taxonomic identification of the study material, a very common issue with studies of both food/spice and medicinal plants. In the interest of providing some clarity to discussions of the health benefits and culinary attributes of the different cinnamons in the marketplace, we offer the results of a long term chemotaxonomic study of cinnamons sourced from different regions of the world and link those chemical data to classical taxonomic identification of the source plants. We also report that sensory analysis can also differentiate the major cinnamons in commerce.