Ingredients · Spice

Nutmeg

Myristica fragrans · Myristicaceae

Nutmeg
The seed of a fruit that also gives us mace — mace is the red lace wrapped around the shell. Nutmeg is warm, sweet and distinctly pungent, and it is one of the few spices where grating it fresh makes an unmistakable difference: whole nutmeg holds its aromatics for years, the pre-ground kind for months. Fourteen products carry it. It is the Christmas spice in a North American kitchen and, in Italy and the Netherlands, an everyday savoury one.

What it’s like, and how to use it

The partSeed
KindSpice
CaffeineCaffeine-free
Where it is fromIndonesia (native range)
TasteWarm, sweet and pungent; noticeably brighter grated fresh than pre-ground

How to use it

Grate it fresh over eggnog, custard, rice pudding and a béchamel. In pumpkin pie, spice cake and doughnuts. The Dutch grate it over Brussels sprouts, cauliflower and green beans; Italians put it in tortellini filling, ricotta and cream sauces; Scots put it in haggis. A little goes a long way, and it should go in near the end.

With food

Cream, milk and custard. Cheese, particularly ricotta and Gruyere. Spinach, cauliflower and Brussels sprouts. Pumpkin and squash. Potato. Veal and sausage. Rum. Egg.

With spices

Mace, which is the same fruit. Cinnamon, cloves and allspice. Ginger. Black and white pepper. Cardamom.

With tea

Darjeeling, Earl Grey and English Breakfast on a baking day. Rooibos with a grating over the top.

Its story

Where it comes from

The Banda Islands in Maluku. The oldest evidence of nutmeg use is 3,500-year-old residue on potsherds from Pulau Ai. In Indonesian it is pala. Shop notes name no lot origin. World production figures are reported combined with cardamom, so they cannot be read as a nutmeg ranking.

What happened

Arab traders dominated the nutmeg trade through the Middle Ages and by the thirteenth century had pinpointed the Banda Islands and kept the location to themselves. Ibn Sina called it jansi ban, the Banda nut — a sign the scholars knew. The Dutch East India Company took the islands by conquest in 1621 and held the monopoly for a century and a half, and while they held it, exported nutmegs were rubbed or soaked in lime so the seed could not germinate and nobody else could plant one. In 1769 and 1770 Pierre Poivre's smuggled seedlings ended that. A Scottish royal feast in 1256 took two pounds each of nutmeg and mace; a Bavarian wedding in 1476 needed eighty-five pounds of nutmeg. Connecticut is the Nutmeg State, from a story that its peddlers were sharp enough to sell a carved wooden nutmeg — though a kinder explanation is that buyers who did not know to grate one tried to crack it like a walnut, found it hard as wood, and cried fraud.

On the shelf with it

Sold on its own, and in these blends.

Every ingredient in the shop

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