Last winter, i.e. about 6 months ago, I was in the habit of making myself hot chocolate at night using ovaltine, cocoa and a pinch of cinnamon. I'd been buying Hoyts cinnamon because it was so much cheaper than Masterfoods. It smelled good, a sweet cinnamon scent.
I kept noticing these slimy 'bits' at the bottom of my mug that appeared to consist mostly of cinnamon. I mixed a bit of Hoyts cinnamon on a plate with some boiling water and it turned into a slimy mass. Figuring that something about the cinnamon was not quite right, I purchased a jar of Masterfoods cinnamon. The smell of the Masterfoods was much sharper and spicier than the Hoyts. I mixed Masterfoods cinnamon with some hot water on a plate and nothing happened. Nothing more than you would expect, anyway: the result was simply a mixture of brown powder and water. It quickly settled out. The Hoyts cinnamon never settled out; it remained suspended in the slime. Upon very close inspection, the Masterfoods cinnamon residue that settled beneath the layer of water also appeared to have an extremely slight degree of sliminess.
I showed my parents the results... my Dad (never an optimist) started going on about how you need to be careful with things like this because someone at Hoyts might decide to have me bumped off. I kid you not- he was quite serious!
Frankly, there's no way of even being sure that this adulteration is even Hoyts' fault. I strongly suspect the cinnamon has been adulterated with some type of gum, and to the best of my knowledge that's not something that would show up in the typical tests for adulteration of spices. Conceivably the cinnamon could have been adulterated by Hoyts' supplier and they would have no way of knowing. Gam and I tried freezing the gum; it froze solid and then returned to its native state when thawed. That might give some clue as to what kind of gum it is, but I don't know of any tests for gums. Usually they're added deliberately to give certain desirable characteristics to a food, such as body, mouthfeel or controlling crystal size in ice-cream. Some of them are rather expensive, but even so most of them would probably be cheaper than cinnamon.
I have been meaning to get in touch with Hoyts but they don't have a website, which means I'll need to get off my apathetic arse and give them a call. I wonder how to explain to some poor secretary or call-centre person that their cinnamon is slimy and needs to be checked out?
Here are some photos Gam and I took recently as an example. Using slightly less water made the results even more dramatic:
The dry cinnamon: Masterfoods on the left, Hoyts on the right.
With recently-boiled water added.
...Emptied onto a saucer.
Mmm-mmm. Hoyts cinnamon!
You probably shouldn't be able to do this with cinnamon...
9 comments:
Lawks! What a horrifying effect!
Hmmm, I don't know if it's related at all, but I did learn this interesting fact the other day:
In Australia, you don't have to label cassia as such, you can also label it as cinnamon.
Though similar, they are different things, and cassia tends to be cheaper so most cinnamons in Australia tend to be cassia instead. If you get quills, you can tell the difference easily; true cinnamon is much more fragile than cassia and will break if you put a small amount of pressure on it (eg squeeze it). Cassia is quite tough by comparison.
It's possible that Hoyts being cheaper would probably use cassia rather than cinnamon, though I'm not aware of cassia producing gum, and Masterfoods might very well use it too...
Oooh gross! I have to go home and check what brand of cinnamon I have!!! Probably ours is a no-name from the markets, but I will check for sure (maybe even do your "goo test" on it)
I had no idea that it's legal to label cassia as cinnamon!
I've seen cassia 'sticks' from an asian supermarket, and you're right, they're much coarser and tougher. We do buy cinnamon sticks, but with things like cakes (and hot chocolate) it's so much easier just to toss in a bit of powder.
Patrick- would you mind telling me where you learned this piece of information?
That last photo could be titled 'when money shots go bad'
I'm still trying to track down the gum effect! Unfortunately, both cinnamon, and cassia has resinous compounds in them. But comparing the too brands, I reckon that's a hell of a lot of resinous variation to be explained away by varietal and seasonal reasons...
I learnt about the labelling on and episode of The Cook and the Chef. I don't have a lot fo time for Maggie Bier (see the food wankery post on my blog. Bourgeois crap. Also, she has _Way_ too many unnecessary steps), but the chef, Simon, is fantastic I think, and extremely knowledgeable.
Please excuse me for commenting on this so late.
We had a similar experience with cinnamon not long ago. The amount of slime that our cinnamon produced ruined a curry. The cinnamon LOOKED like cinnamon rather than cassia. It was pale coloured and rolled up just like regular cinnamon sticks. (The cassia bark we buy is never in stick form; it's just shards of bark.)
We too are convinced that the cinnamon we bought (no idea of the brand) was treated with some sort of gum - guar or xanthan - but we didn't keep any of it after the horrible slime fest.
Elizabeth
It does seem very much like an adulteration, doesn't it? I don't even want to imagine what a curry would look like if it gelled up like that!
I would have thought it would be more difficult to treat the cinnamon with a gum when it's in stick form rather than in powder form... I wonder how they do it?
I'm starting to think that maybe they didn't actually add any gum. I gather from reading about cinnamon and cassia that both of these barks have this slime aspect. But according to Dave D's response about slimy cinnamon in WikiAnswers, it depends where the cinnamon has grown and how much oil content there is in the bark. He says that with less oil content, there is more slime.
My speculation is that the horrible cinnamon that you and I used was constructed from the outward layer of the tree, or an inferior tree, or something. At any rate, that's the last time we buy cinnamon sticks that are on sale. Clearly, the low price WAS too good to be true.
-Elizabeth
P.S. And yes, the curry made with that "cheap" cinnamon was revolting. My gag reflex kicked in just looking at it.
Oh! haven't seen such an effect with cinnamon. But I know for sure that adulteration does happen, like miss-selling cassia for cinnamon. Cassia has high levels of coumarin which could badly affect lungs and kidneys.
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