What to use instead of cinnamon (ceylon)
Quick answer
The closest option is Cassia, rated good. The dish becomes bolder, sweeter-hotter and slightly more astringent, and loses the citrus-floral lift that distinguishes Ceylon cinnamon. In most sweet baking this is not a loss — cassia is what most people expect cinnamon to taste like.
It will not do for: Delicate custards, milk puddings and poached fruit, where cassia bullies everything else; Mexican dishes specifying canela, where the delicacy is deliberate; Diets where habitual heavy cinnamon consumption makes coumarin intake a consideration.
All recorded options
Ranked by suitability. Ratios are given only where they are defensible, and always with their basis — by weight or by volume — because spice densities differ.
Cassia
Good matchUse: 0.5–0.75× by volume — Use less cassia than the Ceylon cinnamon called for. Cassia is appreciably stronger and more astringent.
The dish becomes bolder, sweeter-hotter and slightly more astringent, and loses the citrus-floral lift that distinguishes Ceylon cinnamon. In most sweet baking this is not a loss — cassia is what most people expect cinnamon to taste like.
| Flavour | Aroma | Colour | Heat |
|---|---|---|---|
| close | close | close | n/a |
Works for
- Sweet baking of every kind
- Mulled drinks
- Braises and savoury slow cooking
- Anywhere the recipe simply says "cinnamon"
Does not work for
- Delicate custards, milk puddings and poached fruit, where cassia bullies everything else
- Mexican dishes specifying canela, where the delicacy is deliberate
- Diets where habitual heavy cinnamon consumption makes coumarin intake a consideration
Cuisine: A Mexican or Sri Lankan dish made with cassia is a different dish. Elsewhere, the swap is usually invisible.
Allspice
AcceptableUse: ~0.5× by volume — About half, because allspice is broader and brings clove and nutmeg character with it.
Keeps a dish warm-spiced and stops it tasting of cinnamon, which is either the point or the problem. Allspice also carries a peppery bite that cinnamon has none of — the reason it was once called pimento — and in a delicate bake that shows.
| Flavour | Aroma | Colour | Heat |
|---|---|---|---|
| partial | partial | close | similar |
Works for
- Fruit puddings, mulled drinks and braises
- Caribbean and Levantine cooking, where allspice belongs anyway
Does not work for
- Cinnamon buns and anything named for the spice.
- Delicate baking, where the peppery note is exposed.
The nearer swap — cassia for Ceylon cinnamon — is recorded separately and is much closer, since they are related species sold under one name.
Cinnamon (Ceylon)
AcceptableUse: ~0.5× by volume — Around half a teaspoon of ground cinnamon for one stick of roughly 7–8 cm. Widely repeated convention rather than measurement: sticks vary greatly in length, thickness and species, and SpiceHQ holds no measured yield figure.
The same bark at a different particle size, and the two behave quite differently in a pot. A stick releases slowly into a liquid over a long cook and comes out again; ground cinnamon releases everything at once, cannot be removed, clouds a clear liquid and will settle out of a thin one. For a mulled wine or a rice pudding the stick is doing a job the powder cannot, and the swap is a compromise rather than an equivalence.
| Flavour | Aroma | Colour | Heat |
|---|---|---|---|
| close | close | partial | n/a |
Works for
- Long-simmered dishes where a slight cloudiness is acceptable
- Braises, tagines and stews
- Anything already opaque
Does not work for
- Mulled wine, poached fruit and clear syrups, where the liquid must stay clear
- Anything served with the stick visible as part of the presentation
- Dishes where the spice is removed before serving — the whole point of a stick
SpiceHQ declines to publish a general whole-to-ground yield ratio, and this record is the exception that proves the rule: the figure here is stated as a convention with its variance, not as a measurement.
Where cinnamon (ceylon) stands in for something else
The reverse view of the same graph.
- Instead of Garam masala — good
- Instead of Allspice — good
- Instead of Cassia — acceptable
- Instead of Cloves — acceptable
- Instead of Cinnamon (Ceylon) — acceptable
- Instead of Green cardamom — situational
Questions this page answers
- substitute for cinnamon
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