When the mace, a bright-red membraneous substance, is removed from
the nut it is pressed flat between blocks of wood and left to dry
until it has acquired the right color. The preparation of mace for
the market requires experience rather than technical knowledge. If
packed too green it is liable to mold, and is subject to attacks from
insects, which render it valueless in commerce. On the other hand, if
it becomes too dry it loses its vitality and also crumbles into powder
when packed. Packers frequently sprinkle the mace with salt water,
which makes it more pliable and at the same time prevents attacks from
insects.
[Illustration]
We may here state that nutmegs are divided into two varieties: The
green, which are long and in which the mace only partially covers the
nut; is darker in color and inferior in flavor and aroma; and the
Royal, which furnishes the finest and best mace, firm, thick, flexible
and oily, and entirely envelopes the nut.
As with the nutmeg, mace is sometimes deprived of its essential
oil, and mixed with wild mace or other flavorless matter. Myristica
Malabarica, known under the name of Bombay mace, used to adulterate
the true powdered mace, is much larger and more cylindrical than the
arillus of the true nutmeg and has several flaps united at the apex,
forming a conical structure.
=Products=--Candied nutmeg and mace, nutmeg fruits in vinegar or salt,
preserved nutmeg fruits, and nutmeg or mace essence made from the
essential oil of nutmegs (not mace) and rectified spirits. An essence
of mace is also made from 6 oz. mace and 2 pints cologne spirit,
macerated for a couple of weeks, expressed and filtered thru paper.
“Nutmeg butter”, “butter of nutmeg,” or mace, “concrete oil of nutmeg,”
or “expressed oil of mace,” as it is variously called, is obtained by
subjecting the nutmeg or mace to a great heat and then squeezing or
pressing it in heavy presses. This substance is of a green color of the
consistency of tallow and of a pleasant smell. A pound of nutmegs will
make 3 ozs. of this oil, but a transparent volatile oil is obtained
by distillation. It evaporates rapidly on exposure to air. When cold
it becomes somewhat spongy and has a marbled or mottled appearance.
It becomes hard with age and is exported in small bricks, 10 in. by
2½ in., wrapped in palm leaves. It is known under several names, as
nutmeg butter, balsam of nutmeg, concrete oil or the mace oil of
commerce, and as Banda soap, sometimes made from the distilled nutmeg
leaves, counterfeited by using a foreign fatty substance as palm oil,
nut, wax and animal fat, boiled with powdered nutmeg and flavored with
sassafras, which gives it the right color and flavor.
=Uses=--Nutmegs, besides their use as a spice or condiment, are used to
relieve sleeplessness when opium fails and chloral is not advisable.
For diarrhoea, half a drachm in milk is an effective cure. Butter of
mace is used as a liniment and embrocation for rheumatism and is also a
favorite medicine for low stages of fever with Hindoo doctors.
For ground nutmeg, all the faulty, broken, moldy, worm-eaten and wild
nutmegs are often used.
A little of the history of mace and nutmegs: It has generally been
believed that neither the nutmeg or mace were known to the ancients.
Nutmegs and mace were imported from India at an early date by the
Arabians, and thus passed into western countries. Masudi, who appears
to have visited England in 916–920 A. D., pointed out that the nutmeg,
like cloves, arcca nut and sandalwood, was a product of the eastern
isles of the Indian archipelago. The Arabian geographer, Edrisi, who
wrote in the middle of the 12th century, mentions both nutmeg and mace
as articles of import into Aden. They are also among the articles on
which duty was levied at Acre in 1180. About a century later another
Arabian author, Kozwim, expressly named the Moluccas as the native
country of the spices under notice. One of the earliest references
to them in Europe occurs in a poem about 1195, by Petrus D’Ebulo,
describing the entry into Rome of the Emperor Henry VI, previous to his
coronation in 1191. By the end of the 12th century both nutmeg and mace
were found in northern Europe, even in Denmark, as may be inferred from
the allusions to them in the writings of Harpestring. In England, mace,
though well known, was a very costly article, its value between 1284
and 1377 being about 4s 7d per lb., while the average price of a sheep
during the same period was about 1s 5d, and of a cow 9s 5d. It was also
dear in France, for in the will of Jeanne d’Evreux, queen of France, in
1372, 6 ozs. of mace were appraised at the rate of 8s 3d per lb. In the
middle of the 18th century, the Dutch, with the object of monopolizing
the trade in nutmegs, destroyed all the trees in all the Moluccas
islands, excepting Banda. Nature did not, however, sympathize with such
meanness. The nutmeg pigeon, found in all the Indian islands, did for
the world what the Dutch had determined should not be done--carried
the nuts, which are their food, into all the surrounding countries,
and trees grew again and the world had the benefit. In order to keep
up the price, the surplus stock was burned up each year by certain
unscrupulous men, as is proposed to do at the present day with the
surplus stock of Brazilian coffee. In 1760, they burned at Amsterdam
three such immense piles of nutmegs and cloves that one writer says:
“Each of which was as big as a church.”
This account of nutmeg would not be complete without “Connecticut
Nutmegs.” Some 90 years ago Frederick Accum startled England with his
book “Adulteration of Food and Culinary Poison,” and a sort of pure
food hysteria passed thru the country similar to that caused by the
boric acid investigation here. But he was eclipsed by a person who
declared that the makers of wooden shoe-pegs in Connecticut were making
oats and nutmegs from the discarded wood of sawmills. He asserted they
were not only made, but used as food thruout the country. Thus was
Connecticut christened the Nutmeg State, a name which it has retained
even unto this day.