Herodotus wrote that cinnamon grew in Arabia, and that great birds carried the sticks up to nests on cliffs no man could climb. The Arabians cut up dead oxen and asses and left the joints below; the birds carried the meat up, the nests broke under the weight, and the sticks fell. Pliny had no patience with it. Such tales, he said, were invented by the sellers to raise the price.
One jar, one ingredient, is a harder promise than it sounds. Cinnamon is several trees. Ceylon, Cinnamomum verum, is the soft papery bark of Sri Lanka. Korintje comes from Kerinci in Sumatra and is the common everyday one. Saigon grows in Vietnam's central highlands and is the strongest, about a quarter of its oil cinnamaldehyde. Pepper is one vine picked at three moments: black is the unripe fruit dried, white the ripe fruit soaked a week until the flesh rots away, green kept green.
Nutmeg and mace are one fruit, the seed and the red lace around it, and for a long time they grew in one place. The Banda Islands were the world's only source. In 1621 the Dutch East India Company took them; of perhaps thirteen to fifteen thousand Bandanese, about a thousand were left on their own islands, as forced labourers. Nutmegs leaving the islands were dipped in lime so they could not sprout.
Cinnamon, Ground, Sri Lankan True Ceylon, Organic and Cinnamon, Ground, Vietnamese Saigon are two different trees for two different jobs, and Cinnamon, Sticks, Indonesian Korintje goes in whole and comes out again. Nutmeg, Whole grates brighter than anything pre-ground, and Mace, Ground is its quieter half. Butcher's Cracked Black Peppercorns is the steakhouse grind; Pepper, Black, Ground is the mill's work already done.
