That sounds like a really wierd recipie...
Are you sure it's the cinnamon that gives it a wierd smell? Was the cinnamon fresh? Did you burn anything/ spill anything on the burner? There really isn't a taste subsitute for cinnamon... my suggestion would be making it again, only with fresh ground cinnamon and seeing how that goes
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Sage knows our mythic history, King Arthur's and Sir Caradoc's
She answers hard acrostics, has a pretty taste for paradox
She quotes in elegiacs all the crimes of Heliogabalus
In conics she can floor peculiarities parabolous
-C'hi