The Art of Cinnamon Peeling

Cinnamon is the dried bark of a perennial tree, Cinnamomum zeylanicum Blume, of the family Lauraceae. The Department of Export Agriculture describes true cinnamon as native to Sri Lanka, where it first grew wild in the central hill country.

Most of the bark is sold as quills. A quill is made by rolling the peeled bark and joining several pieces into a pipe-like length, and the department states that making quills is unique to Sri Lanka. The Export Development Board describes quills as the work of experienced peelers, uniform in thickness from one end to the other and filled with small layers of bark inside. It adds that the skill has been handed down from generation to generation.

The Department of Cinnamon Development sets out the steps. A plantation can usually be harvested for the first time two to three years after planting. Stems are cut at a 45-degree angle, about one and a half to two inches above the ground, and the green immature parts, side branches and leaves are removed in the field. The Department of Export Agriculture adds that stems should be peeled on the day they are cut.

The brown outer bark is scraped off first. The stem is then rubbed with a brass rod until the juice oozes out and the bark loosens from the wood. The peeler decides the width of bark to remove according to the grade wanted and lifts it with a small knife. The bark is dried in the shade until it curls, stacked sheet on sheet, filled with small pieces and formed into quills 42 or 21 inches long. The quills dry on strings, racks or nets for four to seven days.

The traditional tools have Sinhala names. The keththa cuts the stems. The surana koketta scrapes the outer bark, called kurutta. The thalana koketta makes the vertical and horizontal cuts and lifts the bark from the wood. Scissors trim the joined bark, and a pethi kotuwa measures the quill at 42 or 21 inches.

Quills are graded after drying, by diameter, by the number of quills needed to make one kilogram and by the percentage of foxing on the surface. The Department of Cinnamon Development identifies about 13 grades in two groups: heen kurundu, or smooth cinnamon, covering the Alba and C grades, and gorosu kurundu, or coarse cinnamon, covering the M and H grades. Alba has the smallest diameter, 6 mm. The Department of Export Agriculture notes that it is mainly produced by very skilful peelers.

Until the Dutch period cinnamon was harvested from the wild. The Department of Cinnamon Development records that the first reference to Ceylon cinnamon is in a late tenth-century book, Aja'ib al-Hind.

A study by a University of Kelaniya scholar notes that the Salagama caste originally served the cinnamon industry, and that Portuguese rulers also engaged the Karawa, Hunu and Padu castes in peeling. On 14 February 1766 the Hanguranketha agreement between King Sri Keerthi Sri Rajasinghe and the Dutch allowed the Dutch to cut and peel cinnamon in certain forest areas.

Between 1765 and 1785 the Dutch governor Iman Willem Falck began experimental cultivation in Colombo, which showed that cinnamon could be grown as a commercial crop. By 1799 the British governor Frederick North had secured cinnamon lands in Colombo and Negombo, and by 1850 the island had about 40,000 acres of cinnamon plantations.

Cultivation is now concentrated along the coastal belt from Negombo to Matara and has spread to Kalutara and Ratnapura, according to the Department of Export Agriculture. The government established the Department of Cinnamon Development in 2023, with its head office at Karandeniya in Galle district. The National Cinnamon Research and Training Centre is at Thihagoda, Matara.

On 2 February 2022 Ceylon cinnamon was entered in the European Union register as a Protected Geographical Indication. The Export Development Board states that the specification covers cut quills, powder, leaf oil and bark oil. Alongside quills, peeling yields quillings, featherings and chips, which the Department of Cinnamon Development lists as raw materials for bark oil. The leaves and shoots removed at harvest are distilled for leaf oil.