Cinnamon

Let me tell you about cinnamon, and why so many cooks get it wrong.

Pick it up before you pick it apart. A good stick feels dry and firm in your hand, never soft or bendy, and the broken end smells sweet and warm right away, a touch sharp too. Buy sticks if you can, and grind them yourself when you need them — the smell that comes off a fresh-ground pinch is nothing like what sits in a jar for months.

Choose cinnamon by smell, not by colour. Break the stick, breathe in at the broken end. If the aroma rises straight to meet you, the stick is good. If you have to hunt for it, or it just smells dusty and flat, it's already past its best, no matter how it looks in the jar. Ground cinnamon tells you the same thing faster — open the jar and sniff before you use it.

Some people say cinnamon is cinnamon, any stick will do, any powder will do. No! Old cinnamon still colours your dish the same warm brown, but sniff it and you'll find little there. That misconception leads straight to a kitchen mistake: cooks keep spooning in more and more of a tired powder, and the dish still comes out tasting heavy and dusty instead of warm.