A colleague went to visit Yunnan and brought these back from Dali - they are pastries with a flaky crust and a rose petal filling, apparently a local specialty. I tasted a quarter of one at tea time. The filling was definitely rose perfumed but was also really quite sweet, but on biting into it, it was much more lychee than rose. Could the lychee flavour be a very sweet version of rose petal, I wonder? I am no food technologist so I cannot give you the answer, but that was what my palate and mouth was telling me.
It is well known that the characteristics of the Gewurztraminer grape can be described using descriptors such as rose petal, lychees, hand cream, etc. I had previously smelt a nurse colleague's rose petal hand cream in the operating theatre and found it a good match of the nose of a nice Gewurztraminer varietal (especially a dry/off dry one from Alsace). I had not really smelt lychee in the glass (except for a German eiswein, but that was something altogether different). Now that I had tried this pastry I can understand the link between lychees and roses and will go looking (or even smelling) for lychees in the sweeter examples of Gewurztraminer.
It is well known that the characteristics of the Gewurztraminer grape can be described using descriptors such as rose petal, lychees, hand cream, etc. I had previously smelt a nurse colleague's rose petal hand cream in the operating theatre and found it a good match of the nose of a nice Gewurztraminer varietal (especially a dry/off dry one from Alsace). I had not really smelt lychee in the glass (except for a German eiswein, but that was something altogether different). Now that I had tried this pastry I can understand the link between lychees and roses and will go looking (or even smelling) for lychees in the sweeter examples of Gewurztraminer.
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