One tree gives two spices: nutmeg from the seed and mace from its red wrapper
Crack open the fruit of the true nutmeg tree and you find a seed wrapped in a crimson lace. Dry the seed for months and it becomes nutmeg; flatten and dry the lace for two weeks and it turns into mace. The tree comes from the Banda Islands, still the world's main source of both.
Myristica fragrans is a dark-leaved evergreen native to the Banda Islands in Maluku, Indonesia, part of the historic Spice Islands. Besides the two spices it yields nutmeg essential oil and nutmeg butter. It is also grown on Penang in Malaysia, in Grenada and elsewhere in the Caribbean, and in Kerala in southern India, the region old writers called Malabar. In a seventeenth-century botanical survey of Malabar, Hendrik van Rheede recorded that Indians had learned to use nutmeg from Indonesians along ancient trade routes.
Processing takes patience. Seeds dry in the sun for 15 to 30 weeks until the kernel shrinks from its hard coat and rattles when shaken; a wooden club then breaks the shell. The finished nutmeg is a furrowed, greenish-brown egg shape, about two to three centimetres long and weighing 5 to 10 grams. The aril, the seed covering, dries for 10 to 14 days and fades from crimson to yellow, orange or tan, ending as brittle, horn-like flakes. Mace tastes like a gentler nutmeg and turns up in baking, pickling and fish dishes, while nutmeg flavours everything from sausages and potatoes to eggnog.
Growing the trees is tricky because each is either male or female, and seedlings split about evenly, with the males bearing nothing. Sex cannot be reliably determined until flowering in the sixth to eighth year, so growers prefer grafting, especially a seedling technique called epicotyl grafting. Trees give a first harvest after 7 to 9 years and reach full production at about 20. On Banda, tall kenari nut trees shelter nutmeg from strong winds.
Nutmeg's reputation goes beyond the kitchen. Folk medicine has used it for psychoactive effects, but claims that it is an aphrodisiac lack clinical support, and large amounts can cause serious poisoning, including acute psychosis. The unrelated nutmeg yews of the conifer genus Torreya bear similar-looking seeds that are not used as spice.
Source: Nutmeg
