Tamalapatra and Tvak

We have some bad habits in this country—terrible traffic etiquette; never, ever queuing in a straight line; and having a real penchant for botanical mis-identifications. I have, as an ethnographer, tried to find meaning even in these mistakes: perhaps we see things that others don’t? Folk taxonomies can be of great significance, after all. But when it comes to mixing up nannari and mahali kizhangu, bottling “nannari” syrups but in fact overharvesting mahali to the point of wild extinction—when it comes to substituting cassia bark for true cinnamon, endlessly and stubbornly insisting that “narthangai” is “citron” when the fruits look nothing like and there is strong phylogenetic evidence for their distinction, or calling our own tamalapatra (Tamil: brinji elai) the “bay leaf,” I reach my limits of tolerance. These are not, not the same things, and using them interchangeably can have not only culinary but also health and ecological consequences.

The correction of two major botanical mis-identifications concern me here: Tamalapatra [Sanskrit] or Tejpatta [Hindi] or Brinji elai [Tamil] are not “bay leaves,” and cassia bark [dalchini in Hindi] is not cinnamon [tvak in Sanskrit]. These count among some of those persistent, annoying confusions that are so sedimented and so confidently written into cookbooks that they feel impossible to root out.

I have to hope for hope, however. Indian cookbooks by even acclaimed authors until recent times called saunf or perunjeeragam [fennel seeds] “aniseed,” leading veteran blogger Anita Tikoo of “A Mad Teaparty” on this thread to remark wryly that “My Kashmiri food must taste like strong mouth freshener to all those following that ‘acclaimed’ cookbook. Just because the Hindi name for the two very different spices happens to have the word “saunf” in it…” But the fact that (1) many know this error and complain about it and (2) that this error doesn’t appear in other more recent and better-vetted books, or that people at least raise questions about the translation of perunjeeragam [as saunf is called in Tamil] into “aniseed”–is heartening. So, I join a chorus of others who’ve been complaining a long time as I am about to now.

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Back to the Bay: part of the problem is that we are really dealing with two genuses of the family Lauraceae: Cinnamomum and Laurus. Bay laurel leaves belong to the Laurus genus, while the genus Cinnamomum contains

• tvak (त्वक्) or tvaca (त्वच) or true cinnamon [bark]
• dalchini or cassia [bark], and
• tamalapatra or the Indian Bay Leaf [leaf!]

The first two are barks, the last is the leaf. So maybe it is that tamalapatra gets grouped with other sort-of-similar aromatic leaves of the second genus Laurus, in which true bay leaves belong.

At least some of the problem is one of mis-translation and unnecessary Anglicization. If we had just stuck to using native terms–in which tvak [as native] and dalchini [as coming from near China regions] are specifically distinguished and in which “tamalapatra” had just remained itself, we may never have wound up confusing things at all.

The True Bay

If you grew up reading Asterix comics as I did, you actually know true bay leaves already. Ceasar’s laurel wreath? Made from aromatic bay laurel leaves and fashioned into a chapelet, which are a Mediterranean species of the family Lauraceae, genus Laurus: Laurus nobilis. Fittingly, of course, because the laurel was a symbol of triumph and victory in sport, war and intellectual and artistic endeavors alike, the origin of the idea of the “laureate” and the phrase “resting on one’s laurels.” It also features widely in European architecture, sculpture, and on coats of arms and shields and the like. Long and intimate associations such as these indicate of course, where the plant is natively from.

That’s the bay laurel, but note that there are many substitute species that also go by the folk label “bay”–possibly owing to similarities in leaf morphology or aroma or both, or because “bay” [like pepper] had become its own point of reference:

1. Cinnamomum tamala/Indian bay (but of course)
2. Litsea glaucescens/Mexican bay,
3. Pimenta racemose/West Indian bay,
4. Syzygium polyanthum/Indonesian bay,
5. Magnolia virginiana/Florida bay,
6. Umbellularia californica/Californian Bay

This last, the Californian bay, is the “headache tree” because it causes, well, headaches; other laurels can be toxic and not to be consumed. Just because something is called “bay” doesn’t make it a spice addition to your food.

The True Tamala or the Indian Bay

Cinnamomum tamala is our tamalapatra, tejpatta, brinji elai –if you want to measure it by the “bay” then it’s qualified as the Indian bay leaf. Of the Family Lauraceae, genus Cinnamomum.

Depending on who you consult, tamalapatra has a higher proportion of the volatile eugenol [Rana et al. 2011] or 5-(2-propenyl)-1,3-benzodioxole [Wang et al. 2009] in its leaves than other Cinnamon varieties–so it’s hard to pin down what gives it its subtle signature taste or its insect-repelling properties at a household grain-storage level. Whatever its key volatiles, it’s not to be substituted for or used interchangeably with the true bay, which is of course Laurus nobilis.

C. tamala is from the Himalayan foothills and much more widely used in Northern and North-influenced cuisines than in the south. The Tamil “brinji” is the name for the leaf used to aromatize brinji pulaos–in our homes, these were vegetable preparations made most importantly with small fried pieces of bread which were like gold nuggets to us children to dig for. The word and its use in a dish are both likely indicative of Persian origin [“berenj” is rice in Farsi] coming south via North Indian and Muslim routes.

Of course then there’s C. malabatrum, a wild cinnamon, used to adulterate tamalapatra [Kumar 2013]—because of course botanical confusions are great for wily merchants who rely on the carelessness of their customers to get by. These two species are not easy to distinguish, however, so I wonder often if we know what it is we are using. Knowing sources and trusting growers, is the only way to go.

The point, however, was that “Indian Bay” uses the Bay Laurel as reference point for naming, but it looks different, grows differently, and imparts a different spectrum of near-camphorescent flavors to whatever you choose to add it to. Tejpatta and tamalapatra–these native words associate it more with cinnamon than with anything Mediterranean. For us, then, this is a type of cinnamon leaf, hardly “Bay” at all. We’d do well to keep our own natural associations and stop mis/translating it.

SIDEBAR: here is also Cinnamomum camphora–Camphora officinarum, the source of white, crystalline edible camphor or paccha karpooram [raw camphor] which I know I encountered on “Camphor Avenue” in Kirstenbosch in Cape Town and which we were sure had been planted in our yard by the birds a long-ago-once-upon-a-time-in-Houston, until Michael Allen indicated to me that most European trees and probably American ones were mis-identified as C. Officinarum when they are likely just Cinnamomum parthenoxylon.

The True Cinnamon

The genus Cinnamomum is 250+ species large, many with culinary and commercial value, distributed all over South and East and South East Asia, and Australasia, too. I’m focusing only on a small subset of familiar ones here, known and used in India, and of course here we’re shifting from speaking of aromatic leaves to aromatic barks. Or, I should say, bark in the singular because at some point before the arrival of dalchini from farther East [see below], there was really none other. The Sanskrit [tvak] means just “skin” (or rind or peel) and the Tamil [pattai], itself probably of Sanskrit origin, indicates flatness and could refer to anything from palm leaves to feathers, plates, paper, cloth (hence du-pattai or dupatta), well, aromatic barks (thanks to @algutierlorene for the linguistic insight). The point being that the names seem to point to general qualities, rather than offering clues to specific identification. 

Cinnamomum zeylanicum or C. verum is [the best] Ceylon cinnamon–the stuff which Michael Ondaatje evokes in the sensorium that is his poem, “Cinnamon peeler.” It is native to Sri Lanka, the “cinnamon isle,” as a Dutch captain reported in the early 1600s, “The shores of the island are full of it … and it is the best in all the Orient: when one is down wind of the island, one can still smell cinnamon eight leagues out to
sea” [cited in Braudel 1984: 215]. Notably, the major volatile in this finest stem bark is cinnamaldehyde, and this is in highest percentage in C. verum, making it the truest cinnamon. The major volatile in leaves is eugenol, also present in bark, but that number is on the lower side for C. verum [Liyanage et al., 2017: 274]. Delicate and thin, it rolls easily into quills and is most often sold as such.

Leaves may be used locally as substitutes for tamalapatra, but likely not. In general, tamalapatra are more commonly used in the cuisines of the North. Pattai, barks are more ubiquitous sans the tamalapatra pairing in the cuisines of the South. They appear in just about every sambar powder I’ve ever known–whereas even the name “birinji” for tamalapatra suggests its use came with other, external influences.

Cassia or Chinese Cinnamon

Cinnamomum aromatica or C. cassia, also called Chinese cassia or Chinese cinnamon because it is from southern China! Which is why we, in [northern] India, know it as dalchini—chini meaning Chinese, or of Chinese [or Vietnamese or Indonesian] origin.

Cassia bark is hard, tough, and not nearly as sweet or delicate as true cinnamon [C. verum]. It is also called dalchini tukuda, or dalchini pieces because it barely rolls into quills like true cinnamon. It’s also ‘poor man’s cinnamon’–cheaper by far than the prized, subtle cinnamon from Ceylon, and at times even preferred for its stronger, more obvious tastes, for example in biriyani masalas like this one. But it’s known to be far higher in coumarin content than true cinnamon, and can do damage to livers if consumed in quantity–so it cannot be treated really as a substitute for true cinnamon from a health point of view.

Tamil names when specific are useful: கருவாப்பட்டை/karuvaapattai or “pencil karuva” is the closest we have to a proper shape-type distinction between cinnamon quills and cassia pattai, in the Southern districts of Tamil Nadu (Sumaiya @readingtv tells me). In the Western Ghats, it’s சுருள் பட்டை/surul pattai or pattai surul, distinguished from cassia bark (thanks to Vijaya @thenipookal for this insight). Don’t be confused by the references to இலவங்கப்பட்டை/ Ilavaṅkappaṭṭai out there; that’s clove bark and another confusion of aromatics in the making, stemming (ha!) from the pairing of pattai-kraambu, cinnamon-cloves so common in our cookery. When just the shortened “pattai” becomes a daily use word to stand in for all cinnamons, however, boundaries expand and cassia is easily included.

Likewise, dalchini comes to stand in for tvak [or taj with short “a” sound in Gujarati] in Hindi speaking belts because it is a similar taste profile, because it is cheaper, and because it has been the most available in that Hindi same heartland or even to us here in Tamil country–while Ceylonese cinnamon was long being carted away by the shipload by the Portuguese or the Dutch or whoever else wanted in on the lucrative maritime spice trade. The commonness of cassia and the frequent substitution for true cinnamon owes to that colonial legacy, too. And they return us to the singularity of being just undifferentiated “aromatic bark.”

Sources

Braudel, Fernand. 1984. Civilization and Capitalism: The Perspective of the World Vol III. Trans. Sian Reynolds. London: Collins.

Sunil Kumar KN. Macro-microscopic examination of leaves of Cinnamomum malabatrum (Burm. f.) Blume sold as Tamalapatra. Ayu. 2013 Apr; 34(2):193-9. doi: 10.4103/0974-8520.119677. PMID: 24250130; PMCID: PMC3821250.

Liyanage, Thushari & Madhujith, Terrence & Wijesinghe, K.. (2017). Comparative study on major chemical constituents in volatile oil of true cinnamon (Cinnamomum verum Presl. syn. C. zeylanicum Blum.) and five wild cinnamon species grown in Sri Lanka. Tropical Agricultural Research. 28. 270. 10.4038/tar.v28i3.8231.

Rana VS, Langoljam RD, Verdeguer M, Blázquez MA. Chemical variability in the essential oil of Cinnamomum tamala L. leaves from India. Nat Prod Res. 2012;26(14):1355-7. doi: 10.1080/14786419.2011.599806. Epub 2011 Oct 18. PMID: 22007840.

Wang, Rui, Ruijiang Wang, and Bao Yang. Extraction of essential oils from five cinnamon leaves and identification of their volatile compound compositions, Innovative Food Science & Emerging Technologies, Volume 10, Issue 2, 2009, Pages 289-292. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ifset.2008.12.002.