Barks
Cinnamon and cassia, rolled and dried from the inner bark of tropical trees.
Bark spices come from the inner bark of tropical trees. Cinnamon and cassia are the two best known, sold as rolled quills or broken sticks.
What they are
Cinnamon is the dried inner bark of Cinnamomum verum, grown mainly in Sri Lanka, and cassia is from related species grown in China, Indonesia and Vietnam. The bark is stripped from shoots, left to dry and curls into a quill. True cinnamon is thin and fine, and cassia is thicker, darker and stronger.
How they are used
Bark is added whole to rice, curries, stews and drinks, and ground into baking mixes. It appears in sweet and savoury foods alike, from Mexican chocolate and Moroccan tagines to Indian garam masala and Vietnamese pho.
Buying and keeping
Whole sticks keep their scent for a long time in a closed jar. Ground bark loses its flavour faster. Because cinnamon and cassia are often sold under one name, check the label for the species if the difference matters to you.
Bark on EveryMasala
The spices written up so far, best known first.
Photo credits on this page
The small pictures above come from Wikimedia Commons under free licences. Some are cropped to fit.
- Common prickly ash: A. Barra, CC BY-SA 4.0, source