Cassia Buds: What They Are, How They Taste and How to Use Them

Cassia buds look a little like cloves, but they smell and taste like cassia cinnamon. Despite the name, they aren’t flower buds. They’re the small dried fruits of the Chinese cassia tree, Cinnamomum cassia, picked while still immature. Medieval European cooks probably knew them well, as “flour of canel.” Today they’re a specialty item you simmer whole in syrups, mulled wine or braises, and one study found their coumarin “comparably low” next to cassia bark.¹

At a glance

What cassia buds are

Despite the name, cassia buds aren’t flower buds. They’re the dried immature fruits of Cinnamomum cassia. Left on the tree, the fruit grows into an ovoid berry 1–1.5 cm long that ripens black to blackish-purple. Cassia buds are that fruit picked early. The tree is an evergreen up to 18 m tall, and every part of it is aromatic.²

PROSEA places Chinese cassia in southern China, Myanmar, Laos and Vietnam, with commercial growing only in China and Vietnam. Kew lists it under the accepted name Cinnamomum aromaticum, native from southeast China to Vietnam.³ The same tree gives you Chinese cassia bark; see cassia cinnamon. It’s one of three species sold as cassia, along with Indonesian and Vietnamese cassia, and PROSEA names the buds only for C. cassia.²

Flavor and aroma

Cassia buds taste like a gentler, rounder cassia cinnamon. Sweet, warm and a little peppery, with a faint floral note the bark doesn’t have.

The compounds

• Essential oil. PROSEA gives 1.9% essential oil, about 80% of it aldehydes.²
• Cinnamaldehyde. A 2018 analysis of commercial cassia buds bought on the German market found cinnamaldehyde was the most abundant compound, at up to 40 mg per gram of sample. In sniffing tests on the extracts (GC-olfactometry), cinnamaldehyde came through strongest, followed by 2-phenylethanol and cinnamyl alcohol. In all, 36 compounds were identified.¹
• Slow release. The same authors describe the buds as strongly lignified, a woody “depot” of cinnamaldehyde suited to slow release.¹ That fits the usual way of cooking them whole in liquids, though the study didn’t test cooking.

Coumarin: buds versus bark

Cassia bark is known for its coumarin. The European Food Safety Authority’s tolerable daily intake is 0.1 mg of coumarin per kg of body weight,⁴ and Germany’s BfR says that in a small group of especially sensitive people, even fairly low doses can lead to liver damage.⁵

The study’s authors call the buds’ coumarin “comparably low.”¹ These figures come from different sampling programs, so they show a clear difference in scale, not an exact ratio. For a rough sense of it: a 60 kg adult’s tolerable intake is 6 mg a day, and buds at the top of the measured range would take more than 12 g a day to reach it. That’s by our math, not a regulator’s. BfR estimates the same adult hits the limit with about 2 g a day of cassia with average coumarin content.⁷

History

The ancient record

You’ll find a couple of origin stories for the word cassia, one from Hebrew and one from the Khasi people of northeast India. We couldn’t trace either to a source that settles it, so we’re not repeating them.

Medieval Europe

The medieval English cookbook The Forme of Cury (compiled around 1390) calls for “flour of canel”, and one recipe says to add cloves and “flour of canel hool” (whole).⁸ Christopher Monk, who writes the Modern Medieval Cuisine site, counts eight uses of “flour of canel” in that manuscript and one Anglo-Norman “flour de quenel”, plus six uses of fleur de canelle in the French Ménagier de Paris. He reads these as cassia buds. Not every scholar is sure. He quotes Constance Hieatt’s note that the term “may mean cassia buds”, and Terence Scully’s glossary to the Viandier of Taillevent translates fleur de canelle as ground cassia bark or buds.⁹ So the medieval “cinnamon flower” was probably, but not certainly, what’s sold today as cassia buds.

Monk also quotes the Forme of Cury recipe for ypocras (hippocras, a spiced wine), which lists “flour de queynel” among its spices.⁹ You’ll often read that King John II of France bought flor de canelle for hippocras in 1359–60. We couldn’t trace that to a source.

How cassia buds are used

• Pickles. Cassia buds are used as a flavoring, and a lot in sweet pickles.
• Whole in liquids. Simmer them in syrups, poached fruit, mulled wine or cider, rice or braises, then strain them out. That’s the usual way to use them, and it fits the 2018 study’s description of the buds as a slow-release depot of cinnamaldehyde.¹
• Ground. You can grind them in a spice grinder and use them wherever you’d use ground cinnamon, for a milder, more aromatic result.

You’ll sometimes see cassia buds listed in Chinese five-spice powder, German pfeffernüsse, paan and ras el hanout. Britannica’s list of the five spices names cassia (Chinese cinnamon) without saying bark or buds,¹⁰ and we found no source for the others, so we’re not stating any of them as fact.

Buying and quality

Cassia buds are sold whole, usually by specialty spice merchants. Sandner and colleagues wrote in 2018 that they’d recently shown up on German markets.¹ We found no international grade standard for them. Look for whole buds that smell clearly of cinnamon when you crush one.

Storage

We found no shelf-life figure from a regulator or standards body. Keep them whole, sealed and away from heat and light. Crush one now and then: a faint smell means they’ve faded.

Health claims

NCCIH, the US government’s center for complementary health, says research doesn’t clearly support using cinnamon for any health condition.¹¹ We found no research on cassia buds themselves as a remedy, and we’re not claiming they treat or prevent any disease. Cinnamaldehyde gives them their flavor. That’s not a health finding.

Substitutes and comparisons

Cassia cinnamon sticks are the nearest swap, with more bite and more coumarin. Whole cloves get the look right but taste very different, since they’re driven by eugenol. See cassia bud substitutes for the ranked list. Related pages: cassia cinnamon, cinnamon, Ceylon vs. cassia cinnamon, cloves, star anise and too much cinnamon.