40 Fun Facts About Cinnamon

Which Roman emperor reportedly burned a year's supply of cinnamon at his wife Poppaea's funeral?

Nero is said to have burned a year's worth of Rome's cinnamon in AD 65, an extravagant gesture because the spice was normally too costly for funeral pyres.

In which country do friends shower unmarried people with cinnamon on their 25th birthday?

Denmark's cinnamon dousing seems to have begun around the 1960s, and anyone still unmarried at 30 can expect pepper instead.

The ancient historian Herodotus wrote that cinnamon sticks were gathered from which unlikely place?

Nests of giant birds clung to sheer cliffs, he wrote, and traders lured the creatures with heavy chunks of meat until the nests broke and fell.

People taking the cinnamon challenge must swallow a spoonful of the ground spice without doing what?

Drinking anything is against the rules of the 60-second dare, so the dry powder coats the mouth and throat and most attempts end in a coughing fit.

Cinnamon sticks are made from which part of evergreen trees in the genus Cinnamomum?

Inner bark only about half a millimetre thick is pried from the cut stems, and it curls into the familiar rolls as it dries.

Which fruit grows on a tree in the laurel family, making it a botanical relative of cinnamon?

Avocado trees belong to the laurel family, Lauraceae, alongside cinnamon, bay laurel and camphor.

Kanelbullens dag, a cinnamon bun day held every 4 October, was launched in 1999 in which country?

Sweden's Home Baking Council created the day to promote baking, and chose 4 October so it would not compete with other food traditions.

A 1541 hunt for a fabled Land of Cinnamon sent Francisco de Orellana down the length of which river?

The Amazon carried Francisco de Orellana to its mouth in August 1542, after he had set out with Gonzalo Pizarro to find cinnamon east of Quito.

Imported to Ancient Egypt as early as 2000 BC, cinnamon was put to which use beyond the kitchen?

Embalming mummies was one Egyptian use for cinnamon, which was so prized in the ancient world that it was regarded as a gift fit for monarchs.

True cinnamon, Cinnamomum verum, comes from a tree native to which Indian Ocean island nation?

Sri Lanka's former name, Ceylon, lives on in the tree's older scientific name, Cinnamomum zeylanicum.

Which Discovery Channel series had its Build Team attempt the cinnamon challenge in a 2012 episode?

MythBusters saw Tory Belleci get his spoonful down by tucking it in his cheek until saliva built up, though it took him more than a minute.

Which cookie is rolled in cinnamon sugar before baking and usually leavened with cream of tartar?

Snickerdoodle dough relies on cream of tartar for its signature texture and taste, the other thing that separates it from a plain sugar cookie.

Which sweet, milky-looking drink made from rice or tiger nuts is typically flavoured with cinnamon?

Horchata in Spain means a tiger-nut drink tied to Valencia, while across the Atlantic the rice-and-cinnamon version is served as an agua fresca.

Which Ohio city is famous for a chili seasoned with cinnamon and served over spaghetti?

Cincinnati chili was created by immigrant restaurateurs in the 1920s and, despite a popular myth, contains no chocolate.

Which American food company has made Cinnamon Toast Crunch cereal since launching it in 1984?

General Mills built the cereal on an idea that an unnamed child sent in to a radio contest asking for the best new Crunch.

Cinnamoroll, a white puppy with a tail like a cinnamon roll, is a character from which company?

Sanrio, the home of Hello Kitty, introduced Cinnamoroll in 2001, and in his stories the little dog can fly.

Which country's traditional chocolate is especially known for being flavoured with cinnamon?

Mexico is the country most associated with cinnamon in chocolate, while cooks elsewhere often add the spice to savoury dishes of chicken and lamb.

Which Italian city's merchants held a medieval monopoly on cinnamon reaching Europe via Alexandria?

Venice lost its grip when rising powers such as the Ottoman Empire disrupted the trade, one reason Europeans went looking for other routes to Asia.

Which explorer's Spanish fleet found cinnamon on Mindanao in the Philippines in 1521?

Ferdinand Magellan's fleet bartered two knives for seventeen pounds of cinnamon off Mindanao in late 1521, months after he was killed in battle on Mactan.

Which milky tea is commonly brewed with cinnamon, cardamom and ginger?

Masala chai literally means mixed-spice tea, and coffee shops around the world now sell it as a chai latte.

Fireball Cinnamon Whisky was first developed by Seagram in the mid-1980s in which country?

Canada's Seagram created it as one of a line of flavoured schnapps, and the Sazerac Company bought the brand and formula in 1989.

The cinnamon teal, named for the male's bright reddish plumage, is a species of what?

The cinnamon teal is a small dabbling duck of marshes and ponds in the western Americas, and the female is a much duller brown.

Which liver-damaging compound is abundant in cassia but found only in traces in true cinnamon?

Coumarin is why European Union guidelines cap how much everyday baked goods may contain, with a higher limit allowed for seasonal treats.

What name is given to the rolled sticks that strips of cinnamon curl into as they dry?

Quills of true cinnamon are made of many thin layers and grind easily, while cassia sticks are much harder.

A French crusader in 1248 reported that cinnamon was fished up in nets at the source of which river?

The Nile was thought to rise at the edge of the world, and the chronicler Joinville believed the story he heard in Egypt while serving Louis IX.

Which country's East India Company drove the Portuguese from the main cinnamon island by 1658?

Netherlands traders arrived in 1638, and one Dutch captain claimed the island's cinnamon could be smelled eight leagues out to sea.

Which Roman author dismissed a tale of cinnamon's origin as a fiction invented to raise prices?

Pliny the Elder wrote that the spice really travelled around Arabia on rafts without rudders, sails or oars, carried by the winter trade winds.

Which starch-testing chemical turns powdered cassia deep blue but hardly affects true cinnamon?

Iodine's starch test gives a quick way to spot cassia passed off as true cinnamon, which shows little effect.

In Japan, a pungent spice called nikki is made from which part of the cinnamon tree?

The roots are more pungent than the rest of the tree, and Japan treats nikki as a product distinct from ordinary cinnamon.

Five-spice powder commonly blends cinnamon, cloves, fennel, Sichuan pepper and which other spice?

Star anise completes the usual five, and the cinnamon in the blend is normally Chinese cassia rather than true cinnamon.

Which reality TV show's twelfth UK series had contestants attempt the cinnamon challenge on air?

Big Brother gave the stunt a television audience in Britain, and radio programmes also aired people attempting it.

Which YouTube comedian drew over 60 million views taking the cinnamon challenge with a soup ladle?

GloZell Green's 2012 video ranked fourth on The Guardian's viral video chart, and she later released a single about the stunt.

Colleen Ballinger took the cinnamon challenge in 2012 while playing which YouTube character?

Miranda Sings took it on after hundreds of fans asked her to, and the video went on to pass two million views.

Which US services took over a hundred calls about the cinnamon challenge in early 2012?

Poison control centers logged the calls as the craze peaked, and one Michigan teenager spent four days in hospital after trying it.

Cinnamon growers cut trees to ground level so fresh shoots sprout, a technique known as what?

Coppicing is done once a tree is two years old, and about a dozen new shoots form the following year to replace the cut stems.

Which cinnamon-based sauce was a staple with roasted meats on wealthy tables in medieval Europe?

Cameline may owe its name to its camel-hair colour, and it faded once cooks came to prefer fresh herbs over heavy spicing.

Korintje, also known as Padang cassia or Batavia cassia, is the cinnamon of which Asian country?

Indonesia's Kerinci region on Sumatra is especially known as the centre of production for crops rich in essential oil.

Finland's large cinnamon roll, the korvapuusti, has a name that literally means what?

A cuff on the ear is the literal meaning, and the Finnish buns can be up to 20 centimetres across and are flavoured with cardamom.

Cinnabon opened its first bakery in December 1985 inside a shopping mall in which US state?

Washington's SeaTac Mall in Federal Way housed the first shop, and a Seattle baker, Jerilyn Brusseau, developed the roll recipe.

Goldschläger, the cinnamon schnapps with flakes of real gold in the bottle, began in which country?

Switzerland was its original home, though the idea descends from Danziger Goldwasser, a gold-flecked liqueur first made in Poland in 1606.