Nutmeg and mace

Spices are seeds, fruits, roots and barks that are used to flavour or colour food. Today, spices are affordable for most people but there was a time when only the richest Europeans could afford spices like nutmeg and mace. Serving them became the ultimate symbol of wealth and power. The only way to reduce the cost was to import directly from spice producing countries.

Nutmeg and mace are spices produced from the fruit of a tree (Myristica fragrans) native to the Maluku Islands in Indonesia. Nutmeg is made from the grated or ground seed, while mace is from the bright red or orange seed covering. In the 1850s a ‘worm’ destroyed Indonesian nutmegs. Suddenly plantations in Singapore were reduced from 56,000 trees to just a few hundred.

These nutmeg and mace specimens are from Granada. In 1843 Frank Gurney was the first to bring nutmeg to Grenada. The island was quick to respond to the crisis in Indonesia and by 1860 commercial plantations were a success. At its peak, Grenada produced around 2000 tonnes of nutmeg per year. The country’s flag incudes a depiction of a nutmeg and locals refer to the spice as ‘black gold’. In recent times, hurricanes have hampered production, but plantations are recovering.

Despite the spread of plants around the globe, Indonesia is still the world’s largest producer of nutmeg and mace.

Visual description: Small, oval brown seeds with a slightly wrinkled surface. The nutmeg seeds are covered with a lacy, orange outer covering.