Cinnamon

Where it comes from

True cinnamon is the dried inner bark of Cinnamomum verum, a tree indigenous to Sri Lanka^1,4. The finest grades come from the island’s south-west; a nineteenth-century account places the best bark on a strip twelve to fifteen miles wide between Negombo, Colombo and Matara, below about 460 m³.

The trees are not allowed to become trees. They are coppiced: stems are cut about 4–5 cm above the ground, which sends up new shoots, and a well-managed plantation is harvested two or three times a year, the first cut coming two to three years after planting. The timing follows the rains, because the bark peels most easily once the new leaves have turned green².

Peeling is hand work with named tools. The brown outer bark is scraped off with a surana koketta; the stem is rubbed with a brass rod until the sap loosens the bark from the wood; the inner bark is lifted with a small knife, the thalana koketta; the sheets are dried in the shade until they curl, then packed with small pieces and rolled into quills of 107 or 53 cm and dried on racks for four to seven days. The Department recognises about thirteen grades, and in 2022 Sri Lanka obtained a geographical indication for Ceylon cinnamon, the country’s first².

How it travelled

Cinnamon was, by one account, the first spice to reach the Mediterranean from this ocean⁴. Its documented modern history begins with the Portuguese, who reached Sri Lanka in 1505 and by 1597 controlled much of the island, driven above all by the wish to control cinnamon⁵. The Dutch East India Company took the coastal lands from them in 1658 and by 1665 held most of the cinnamon-growing lands and the island’s ports^5,6.

The Dutch ran cinnamon as a monopoly. Plants were limited to a set number and the surplus destroyed; prepared bark was at times thrown into the sea or burnt, including a large quantity burnt on 10 June 1760³. Until about 1770 the bark was gathered from wild trees; a Company officer named De Koke then began cultivating cinnamon, “in opposition to the universal prejudice in favour of wild growing cinnamon”, and the plantations freed the Dutch from dependence on the inland kingdom of Kandy³. The peelers were skilled, and many were recruited from southern India⁶.

The British took the island in 1796 and made it a crown colony in 1802⁵. The trade became a monopoly of the English East India Company until 1834, when it passed to merchants and private growers; an export duty of a third to a half of the bark’s value lasted until 1853³.

Much of what is sold as cinnamon is cassia, the bark of other Cinnamomum species grown mainly in Indonesia and China⁴. The two differ in a measurable way: cassia contains the flavouring coumarin at an average of about 3,000 mg per kilogram, while Ceylon cinnamon contains only low levels, and Germany’s food-safety institute advises moderation with cassia because coumarin can harm the liver of sensitive people. The sticks are easy to tell apart: a cassia stick is a single thick curl of bark, a Ceylon quill many thin layers rolled together⁷.

Today

Sri Lanka is the largest producer and exporter of true cinnamon. The Export Development Board puts its share of the world market at about 90%¹, and a 2025 study of the trade says Sri Lanka supplies close to 90% of true cinnamon, with Madagascar the other notable producer; the five main exporters of cinnamon in the broad sense are China, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Madagascar and Vietnam⁴. The quill-making craft is specific to Sri Lanka and handed down in families¹.

With apples

The pairing is a northern baking tradition rather than an Indian Ocean one: apple pie, strudel and baked apples owe their warmth to cinnamon, and no traditional Sri Lankan dish combining the two was found. The irony is that the bark in most Western apple pies is cassia. A quill of Ceylon cinnamon gives a lighter, sweeter note.

Recipe

Apples baked with a whole quill, for four.

Heat the oven to 180 °C.
Core four firm apples without cutting through the base, and set them in a dish that holds them snugly.
Mix four tablespoons of soft brown sugar with a teaspoon of ground Ceylon cinnamon and a pinch of salt, and spoon it into the cavities.
Push a 5 cm piece of cinnamon quill into each apple so it stands up like a candle.
Pour 150 ml of apple juice or water around the apples and drop a knob of butter on each.
Bake for 35 to 45 minutes, spooning the juices over them twice, until a knife slides in easily.
Rest for five minutes, remove the quills, and serve with the pan juices and cold cream or yoghurt.

Notes

A finished quill is built up from several bark sheets packed with small pieces and dried in the shade; sun would spoil the colour².
The coumarin difference is roughly a hundredfold on the German figures⁷.
Ceylon cinnamon’s geographical indication, granted in 2022, was Sri Lanka’s first².

Where the sources disagree

How much Sri Lanka grows. No current tonnage was verified from a primary source, so none is given. The 90% figure is the Export Development Board’s own claim and a 2025 study’s estimate for true cinnamon; world statistics lump cassia in with it^1,4.
The end of the British monopoly. The archive article gives 1834³; some commercial histories say 1833.