Dried cassia buds resembling cloves are used in the East for pickles, curries, candies and spicy meat dishes.
Tiny yellow cassia flowers have a mild cinnamon flavor and are sold preserved in a sweetened brine and used to perfume sweets, fruits, teas and wines.
Cinnamon continues to be a popular spice used in Vietnamese cuisine, especially in stews, soups and desserts. You can use this reddish-brown or yellow-brown tree bark as dried, rolled-up strips or ground. Vietnamese cinnamon comes from the bark of the Cinnamomum loureirii cassia tree that is native to the higher, mountainous regions of Central and Northern Vietnam.
Regarded by many as the world’s most aromatic cinnamon, this Vietnamese variety has the highest concentration of essential oils of any cinnamon currently found in the world today. Because of the powerful amount of aromatic oils, Vietnamese cinnamon is extremely intense and concentrated with sweet cinnamon flavor. Unlike other cinnamon, Vietnamese cinnamon is surprisingly sweet and robustly spicy, similar to that of a “red hot” candy.