Hi, I bought a bag of what was labelled coriander seeds from my local indian grocers. However they looked and tasted slightly different from the supermarket seeds. When I looked it up in my cookbook and there was a listing for a similar looking seed called a mahleb cherry. Is this a common subsitute to make or bad labelling as I have also seen similiar e.g.cassia bark labelled and sold as cinnamon?

As far as I know, Mahleb cherry stones are used only in Middle Eastern cooking, to give an almond flavour.

Cassia is much more common than cinnamon in most parts of the world. True cinnamon comes from Sri Lanka, whereas cassia, although grown in Southern India now, and possibly other regions, originally came from outside of India. The Hindi name is 'dal chini', figuratively meaning 'wood from China', but really meaning wood from outside of India, ie not desi cinnamon. Even in India, cassia is labelled 'cinnamon'. Some people may not have even tasted real cinnamon. I only use cassia in Indian cooking, it combines with other flavours better, IMHO.

The use of 'chini' is similar to the use of 'Kabuli' when applied to channa, here it means non-desi channa, channa from outside of India, in this case, Kabul, in Afghanistan, and refers to the large chickpea used in Middle Eastern cooking. 'Chini' is also found in the spice cubeb pepper or tail pepper, known in Hindi as kababchini. It has nothing to do with kebabs (although it is put in some kebab recipes due to this confusion) but derived from cubeb, itself derived from the French queue, meaning tail, which the pepper corn can be said to have. Note, kebabchini is sometimes used to describe 'allsice', which comes from the West Indies, and unlikely to have been seen in India until very recently.

Just been googling the rock cherry and corriander and nothing about them seems to be in anyway related ! Its not from the same plant family, its not the same flavours in fact about the only similer thing is they are little seeds ! In the pages I looked at nothing mentioned them as a substitute, nothing even came up with Indian recipes....

I'd say its either a genuine misguided mistake or someone is trying to sell one product as another?

Steve

Simon, this may be a case of wrong labelling. You should take it back to the shop and tell him you want coriander seeds.

Lapis, this is such a good explanation of the difference between cassia and cinnamon, thank you. You are so right, most people in India use cassia as cinnamon. I did not know the difference until some 20 years ago!

I remembered looking this up some time back and seemed to think the two are not related... or are only loosly related so went googling...

from - www.theepicentre.com/Spices/cassia.html

Cassia

Cinnamomum cassia

Fam: Lauraceae

Cassia is an aromatic bark, similar to cinnamon, but differing in strength and quality. Cassia bark is darker, thicker and coarser, and the corky outer bark is often left on. The outer surface is rough and grayish brown, the inside bark is smoother and reddish-brown. Cassia is less costly than cinnamon and is often sold ground as cinnamon. When buying as sticks, cinnamon rolls into a single quill while cassia is rolled from both sides toward the centre so that they end up resembling scrolls.

If you look on the page it lists several different types of "Cinnamonum" where the ending (in this case "cassia" is different! So you get "cinnamonum tamala" from India, "Cinnamomum burmanni" from Indonisia etc...

What is known as "Cinnamon" is "Cinnamomum zeylanicum" which is the inner back of a tropical evergreen tree......

from - www.theepicentre.com/Spices/cinnamon.html

Cinnamon

Cinnamomum zeylanicum

Fam: Lauracae

Cinnamon is the inner bark of a tropical evergreen tree. There are many different species, between 50 and 250, depending on which botanist you choose to believe. The two main varieties are Cinnamomum cassia and Cinnamomum zeylanicum. The first, cassia, we will consider separately in its own section. C. zeylanicum is also known as Ceylon cinnamon (the source of the its Latin name, zeylanicum), or ?true cinnamon? which is a lighter colour and possessing a sweeter, more delicate flavour than cassia. A native of Sri Lanka (formerly Ceylon) the best cinnamon grows along the coastal strip near Colombo....

Steve