Welcome to the summary page for FabulousFusionFood's Spice guide to Canella along with all the Canella containing recipes presented on this site, with 6 recipes in total.

This is a continuation of an entire series of pages that will, I hope, allow my visitors to better navigate this site. As well as displaying recipes by name, country and region of origin I am now planning a whole series of pages where recipes can be located by meal type and main ingredient. This page gives a listing of all the Cornish recipes added to this site.

These recipes, all contain as a major flavouring.

Canella, Canella winterana (also known as cinnamon bark, native cinnamon, wild cinnamon, white cinnamon, Canella alba Murray and Laurus winterana L.) is a spice made from the bark of the Canella winterana tree, which is a monospecific genus Canella containing only the species, Canella winterana. It is native to the Caribbean, with a range extending from the Florida Keys to Barbados.

Similar to true cinnamon and cassia (Cinnamonum spp [members of the laurel family]), the spice component of Canella is the dried bark, which is stripped off the tree and dried in quills, in a similar way to true cinnamon (though canella is much softer and easier to handle).

Under ideal conditions, Canella winterana will grow to 10m tall. It has a straight trunk some 25cm in diameter with scaly aromatic bark, stout ashy grey branchlets conspicuously marked with large orbicular leaf-scars. The leaves are petiolate, alternate, destitute of stipules, penniveined, entire, pellucid-punctate, coriaceous. The flowers appear in the autumn and are arranged in a many-flowered subcorymbose terminal or subterminal panicle composed of several dichotomously branched cymes from the axis of the upper leaves or of minute caducous bracts. Sepals suborbiculate, concave, coriaceous, erect, their margins ciliate. Petals hypogynous, in a single row on the slightly convex receptacle, oblong, concave, rounded at the extremity, fleshy, twice the length of the sepals, white or rose-colored.

When fertilized, the flowers develop into bright crimson fruit which ripen in March and April. The fruit are very attractive to birds. Canella is a very attractive tree and is commonly grown in gardens. Indeed, it was was introduced into England in 1738.

As a spice, canella is much paler than true cinnamon and is much softer. This makes the quills easier to handle than true cinnamon sticks. Canella, though it has a flavour profile similar to true cinnamon, due to the presence of cinnamaldehyde (3-phenyl-acrolein), but white cinnamon is much more aromatic than true cinnamon and does not have the 'medicinal' overtones of true cinnamon, due to the absence of eugenol and safrole components.

Interestingly, cinnamon is native to Sri Lanka. In the early 19th century, canella was introduced to gardens there and the bark is now used in Sri Lankan cuisine where it is known as 'white cinnamon'. Culinarily, canella can be used as a direct substitute for cinnamon and the more floral nature of canella goes particularly well with sweet dishes. It also lends a subtlety to curries (particularly East Asian ones) and stews and is an excellent accompaniment to pork and meaty fish.

The name canella, is derived from the Spanish canella, for Cinnamon, which is a diminutive of the Latin canna (cane or reed). Even in English, this was the original name of cinnamon, due to the form of a roll or quill which it assumed in drying. Medieval English recipes call for cannell as cinnamon. Later, the term canella was transferred to the West Indian tree and cinnamon was used for the Sri Lankan tree.

Both the outer and inner barks of canella are used as a spice. The outer bark is hard and resembles chips of cassia, whilst the inner bark forms quills and is more similar to true cinnamon in appearance.