Nutmeg
Myristica fragrans
A whole nutmeg keeps most of its interesting features hidden. From the outside it's hard, brown and deeply furrowed, with a warm scent that becomes much stronger only once the surface is broken. Cut through the seed and things improve considerably. Pale tissue is threaded with dark branching lines, creating the marbled interior characteristic of nutmeg.
Before drying, there's another colour entirely. The seed develops inside the fruit of Myristica fragrans wrapped in a brilliant scarlet aril. That covering is removed and dried as mace. One fruit therefore gives us two familiar spices that look increasingly unrelated the further they get from the tree.
Classification
Kingdom: Plantae
Order: Magnoliales
Family: Myristicaceae
Genus: Myristica
Species: Myristica fragrans
Common Names: Nutmeg, True Nutmeg, Fragrant Nutmeg
Plant Form: Evergreen tree
Material: Dried seed
Native Range: Banda Islands, Indonesia
What's Wrapped Around the Seed?
The fruit of Myristica fragrans is fleshy, yellowish and roughly oval, sometimes compared in appearance with an apricot. As it ripens, it splits naturally along a seam.
Inside, the colours are much less restrained.
A dark seed sits beneath a branching scarlet aril that curves closely around its surface. The aril is carefully removed and dried, becoming the orange to golden brown blades known as mace. The seed follows a longer drying process before its hard outer coat is removed to reveal the nutmeg kernel.
It's an unusually tidy botanical relationship once you've seen the whole fruit. Mace isn't produced elsewhere on the tree or harvested at another time. It was sitting directly against the nutmeg all along.
Much More Interesting on the Inside
The outside of a dried nutmeg doesn't prepare you particularly well for the middle.
Cut across the kernel and a network of dark lines appears through paler tissue. The pattern comes from folds within the seed's internal tissues rather than simple layers arranged around its centre. One nutmeg may show a particularly dense network while another has broader areas of pale tissue between the darker lines.
This is also where much of the familiar aroma is waiting. Nutmeg contains a mixture of volatile compounds including sabinene, pinene and myristicin. No single one accounts for the complete fragrance.
Keeping the kernel whole protects much of that aromatic interior from exposure to air. A nutmeg can consequently seem fairly restrained in a jar, then become unmistakable as soon as it's cut or grated.
It was keeping most of the good part inside.
A Spice from a Very Small Place
For centuries, Myristica fragrans had an extraordinarily restricted natural home. The species originated in the Banda Islands, a small group within Indonesia's Maluku Islands.
Nutmeg and mace were already travelling through extensive Asian trading networks long before European ships reached their source. They passed between merchants, ports and regions, moving progressively further from the trees that produced them. By the time nutmeg reached medieval European markets, many of the people buying it had little idea where it actually grew.
Eventually Europeans found out.
Competition for control of the spice trade brought the Dutch East India Company to the Banda Islands. In 1621, forces under Jan Pieterszoon Coen carried out a violent campaign against the Bandanese population involving killings, enslavement and forced displacement. Nutmeg production was subsequently reorganised under Dutch colonial control.
It's difficult to reconcile that history with how ordinary nutmeg looks now. A small brown seed in a kitchen cupboard was once valuable enough to help make a tiny group of volcanic islands the focus of international competition.
Getting the Trees Off the Islands
A monopoly based on controlling where a tree grew had an obvious weakness. The tree could be moved.
Dutch authorities attempted to maintain control over nutmeg production, but plants were eventually established beyond the territories they controlled. During the 18th century, the French successfully transferred nutmeg plants to other colonial growing regions, and cultivation continued spreading through suitable tropical climates.
Grenada eventually became particularly associated with the crop. A stylised nutmeg fruit even appears on the country's national flag.
Today M. fragrans grows commercially in several tropical regions, far beyond the small Indonesian islands where it originated. Indonesia remains an important producer, but the geography of nutmeg has changed completely.
The seed travelled first. Eventually the tree followed.
Valuable Enough for Its Own Grater
Nutmeg's history as an expensive imported spice left behind some wonderfully specific objects.
Whole nutmegs could be carried and grated only when needed, preserving their aroma while also making a valuable spice last. Nutmeg graters and small containers were produced in everything from straightforward domestic forms to elaborate examples in silver.
The seed's value also helps explain some of the symbolism that gathered around it. Contemporary folk and metaphysical traditions associate nutmeg with luck, prosperity, protection and opportunity. Whole nutmegs may be kept as charms, particularly in practices concerned with good fortune and material success.
Those modern associations shouldn't be treated as one uninterrupted tradition stretching back through the spice trade. Still, prosperity is an understandable idea to attach to something that once represented considerable wealth in its own right.
Better Whole Until It Isn't
Nutmeg is considerably sturdier than a dried flower or leaf, but moisture remains unwelcome. Whole kernels are best kept dry, protected from strong light and stored in a closed container that limits unnecessary exposure to air.
Their appearance naturally varies. Some are deeply furrowed, others comparatively smooth, and size, shape and colour won't be perfectly uniform from one seed to the next.
Keeping them whole also preserves something less visible. Once the kernel is broken or grated, far more of its aromatic interior meets the air and the fragrance becomes immediately stronger.
For storage, that's a reason to leave it alone. For curiosity, it's a very good reason to cut one open.
In the Apotheca
Nutmeg becomes much easier to understand with mace sitting nearby.
The two dried botanicals barely resemble one another. One is dense, brown and furrowed. The other is thin, branching and golden orange. Go backwards to the fresh fruit and the separation disappears. Scarlet mace is wrapped around the dark seed closely enough to follow its shape.
There's another reveal inside the nutmeg itself. The plain brown exterior gives way to a marbled centre, and breaking that surface releases far more of the scent that made the seed worth transporting around the world.
Kept whole, nutmeg hides both parts of its story rather well.
Mace shows what was once around it. A cut surface shows what was there all along.
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