Kitchen experiment: cinnamon

On a recent trip to California, we took the opportunity to visit a Penzeys Spices store.  One of the items on my list was Ceylon cinnamon, supposedly 'true cinnamon' as opposed to the cassia that is usually packaged as cinnamon; they're both part of the genus Cinnamomum, so it's more a matter of labeling and semantics, I suppose.  We were curious, so we picked up a jar along with several other herbs and spices, some of which were on the original list...and multiple that had not been.

I wanted to test the Ceylon cinnamon against "regular" cinnamon, so I decided on rice pudding: a nice neutral background for a flavoring.*  I used the Joy of Cooking recipe, and made two batches of 1/3-recipe so that we wouldn't be inundated with rice pudding.  To each batch, I added 1 egg yolk (I had used some egg whites earlier in the afternoon and didn't have any other immediate use for the yolks) and 3/4 tsp. cinnamon, both mixed in with the milk and sugar.  When I opened up the Ceylon cinnamon, I decided to first compare the fragrance of the two: the ol' swipe-a-finger-across-the-inside-of-the-lid-to-pick-up-just-a-bit trick.  Of course, at that point, I couldn't stop making Dune references.

Puddings in process.  Yes, the regular cinnamon is from Trader Joe's, and we haven't lived in a state with a Trader Joe's in over 6 months.  Might the age of the cinnamon have affected our conclusions?  Our past experience with 'older' spices indicates that this is negligible for us, but perhaps not so negligible for a professional.

At the first tasting, we both decided that the pudding with Ceylon cinnamon was our preference: it seemed to have a stronger and punchier flavour, though both puddings were tasty.  Even after a day in the fridge, we still both liked the pudding made with the Ceylon cinnamon.  Neither cinnamon was 'better', as it were, and since neither of us is any kind of a connoisseur (wine, beer, coffee, cheese, etc.), we can't even really quantify the taste differences between the two.  Most likely we won't go too far out of our way to get the 'real' stuff (though we'd never turn it down if given the opportunity), but this was an interesting experiment that gave us a good excuse to try something new.  And a good reason to buy a bunch of stuff at Penzeys.

Our finished puddings: that's 1/3 of a recipe of rice pudding in each 25-oz. bowl.  Two servings each!

Joy of Cooking (2006), p. 820: the "stovetop rice pudding", not the "baked rice pudding".

*With one actual scientist and one aspiring scientist in the household, I needed to create as close to a double-blind study as is possible when only two people are involved, so I devised this method: I would make the puddings and assign a random number to each bowl of pudding while Dom was at work.  Then, when it would be time for tasting, he would select the number of pudding that we'd test first, without telling me which number it was.  Unfortunately, time ran out on my day off and we ended up making the puddings together, but I'd say we have a solid design for our next experiment: Madagascar vanilla vs. Mexican vanilla.