Myristica fragrans, the nutmeg tree is unique in nature as being the only tree or plant to give us two very valuable spices: nutmeg and mace. Nutmeg has the better reputation, its name synonymous with war, conquest, and piracy, commanding a price that was worth more than its weight in gold. Mace in contrast is like the ugly duckling, the Cinderella to her more famous sister, the diamond in the rough.
Nutmeg has a deep, sweet, and woody flavor that is suitable for both sweet and savory dishes. The spice is used sparingly as it is rich in tannins which give it a penetrating and astringent taste that can overpower delicate spices. Nutmeg is also a known tonic, exciting the heart, which gives it its perceived aphrodisiac properties.
Where does mace come from? What is the history of Mace?
Nutmeg is native to the Banda Islands which form the Moluccas archipelago of Indonesia and made its way to the Byzantine empire by the 6th century. This spice was so prized for its flavor and aphrodisiac and healing properties that traders kept its origin secret to ensure its rarity. Europe in the 16th century valued
Mace, like nutmeg, originates in the tiny Banda Islands of Indonesia, where the warm, humid climate allows these trees to yield several crops per year. Europe, or rather the Byzantine empire, used mace in the 6th century CE when it was known as a cure-all food preservative, fumigant, and aphrodisiac. This spice rapidly became one of the most sought-after spices in European cuisine, garnering a price that beggared belief.
For centuries, the origin of this spice was a closely guarded secret, known only to a few merchants princes who protected their source at swordpoint. As Europe expanded, seafaring nations such as Portugal, England, and the Netherlands fought for centuries to control the growing regions. Tired of the bloody conflict, the English solved the problem by simply transplanting the trees, along with their soil to several of their colonies such as Grenada and Sri Lanka.
With supply rapidly expanding and a steady delivery from the plantations, nutmeg and mace rapidly overtook mustard and saffron as the Western cuisine spices of choice, with the more common mace being sold at a slightly lower price than nutmeg.
What is mace spice? Is mace a nut, a tree or a plant?
Mace is a unique, sweet spice… no, let us scratch that. Myristica fragrans is a tropical evergreen tree that bears a stone fruit similar to peaches, plums, or cashews. The stone or seed is protected by a thin red skin, like a web, which is dried and sold as mace.
As both nutmeg and mace come from the same fruit, they share similar flavor profiles and yet each is unique. Where nutmeg is the seed of this fruit, mace is the lacy covering of the stone, dried into blades.
The tree itself grows to stunning heights of up to 60ft or roughly 20 meters, bearing tiny bell-shapped flowers with a lily-of-the-valley fragrance. While mace and nutmeg have been incredibly expensive in the past due to the lack of supply, a single tree can be harvested several times a year and produces more than 10,000 fruits per year.
What does mace smell like?
Mace is a very unique spice, with its parent tree aptly named Myristica fragrans… “fragrance of myristicin”. Fresh mace smells sharper and less sweet than nutmeg, while possessing very subtle mint or basil undertones, along with black pepper, pine and coriander/citrus. Older mace, which has lost its esential oils, is really hard to tell apart from nutmeg.
While mace and nutmeg come from the same plant, the two spices smell the same and yet totally different, like the peel of a lemon is not quite the same as lemon juice.
What are the flavor chemicals in mace, what does mace taste like?
Mace has a wider variety of fragrant oils, while lacking the tannins of nutmeg, giving it a much smoother mouthfeel. Sabinene is toned down, almost pasked, thus mace is a lot less peppery than nutmeg as well.
Mace is lighter, sublter, and sweeter than nutmeg, a cross between nutmeg and coriander, with a light touch of citrus and cinnamon and a dash of mint.
Slightly softer than nutmeg, mace can replace nutmeg in most dishes. Howerver, mace shines in savoury sauces, meat, pickles, and chutneys. As mace comes in whole blades, it is often used to infuse pale creams and clear broths to avoid woody flecks from distracting the palate.
Mace, is unique and yet similar to nutmeg. While it has fallen out of fashion, it is essential to any oantry with a very compley set of essential oils:
- Sabinene – citrus / campherous / peppery / woody
- Terpineol -floral / citrus / pinewood
- Safrole – sweet / warming / anise-like
- Eugenol – eucalyptus / penetrating / warming
Where to use mace:
Mace has more fragrant oils, giving it far more perfume than nutmeg while also possessing a lot less peppery sabinene, making this a great spice for dishes where floral elemicin becomes the perfect foil for terpineol. The subtle balance, and the lack of tanins means that mace provides a fine, subtle hint of spicyness without the mouth-puckering effect of tanins. Where nutmeg deepens a flavor, mace elevates it!
Food partners:
- Vegetables: Spinkle over spinach, carrot soup or a creamy potato bake, alternatively use on a vegetable pilau rice
- Cheese sauce: make an incredible cheese sauce for macaroni cheese or lasagna by infusing milk with a balde of mace
- Shellfish: add a blade of mace to a bisque or shellfish broth, sprinkle freshly ground mace over potted shrimp or crab before serving it on warm rye bread or in a warm pasta
- Pork, chicken: Infuse a blade of mace in milk to make a bechamel base for a chicken pie or simply make pork, ricotta, and lemon-zest meatballs perfect by sprinkling some ground mace in the mixture. Let us not forget Sweedish meatballs or English pork pie either… where a sprinke is all that is needed.
- Deserts: Infuse a blade into a custard for a triffle or whisk freshly gorund mace into sweetened whipped cream to serve with fruit. Rhubarb cakes are simply not the same without some mace.
- Sweet bakes: simply sprikle sparingly over an American pumpkin pie or milk puddings to add depth or add to spiced cake batters. For unbeatable donuts or sweet potato pie, stir ground mace in the dish just before baking.
- Breakfast: just sprinkle a pinch on top of a home-made granola prior to eating to tantalise the taste buds.
- Cocktails: With its floral bouquet and soft sweetness, mace is perfect to add a hint of the unknown to most Caribbean cocktails or a rum punch.
How release the flavor of mace?
Mace, like nutmeg, is packed with flavorful oils which evaporate or degrade rapidly with prolonged heating. Worse than that, many people dislike the new, terpene-like compounds that can be formed in the process, finding the ruined product quite bitter. Additionally, mace oils dissolve very poorly in water, pushing the chefs to rather use oil or milk to extract the flavor.
- Grind lightly and use immediately to avoid losing the subtle terpenese to evaporation.
- Fry gently or add some oil to the cooking liquor and add the mace at the beginning of a dish, for example as you are frying an onion base.
- Add whole mace blades early to give them as much time as possible to release their oils and infuse the dish, but avoid simmering for too long as well as this will reduce the effect of mace.
- Ground mace or mace powder diffuses and spreads much faster than mace blades and should be added in much later in the process to reduce terpene evaporation.
- Incorparate freshly gorund mace in any dough that needs to cook at a lower temperature.
Mace Blendology
Like all spices, mace can be used to enhance flavors or can have its own flavors enhanced. Spice blends need to be carefully calibrated to avoud occasions where two spices clash and destory a dish.
While I love to use fresh mace on its own, there is a lot to be said for pairing it with just the right set of complementary spices to get a dish packed with flavor.
Dried aril pieces, the web-like skin of the stone, are known as blades. Orange-red blades come from Indonesia while paler, orange-yellow blades come from Grenada.
How to enhance the flavor of mace:
| Chemical | Flavor being enhanced | Complementary spice | Effect |
| Sabinene | woody / peppery | black pepper | enhances the pepperiness of mace |
| Sabinene | citrus | black cardamom | enhances the citrus by adding limonene traces and adds smokiness |
| Sabinene | camphorous | curry leaf | adds woody notes and pine flavors while giving a hint of mint |
| Eugenol | eucalyptus / warming | allspice | adds a deep sweet pepperiness with a floral backgorund while adding loads of eugenol |
| Eugenol | eucalyptus / warming | clove | smell clove, smell euginol… clove increases the eucalyptol and terpineol levels |
| Terpeneol | floral / citrus / pinewood | coriander | distinct pine and citrus compounds, along wtith a powerful floral hit enhance these traits in mace |
| Safrole | sweet / /warming / anise-like | star anise | safrole is rare but also found in star anise, along with anethole, an anise-like compound. |
Perfect blends:
Mace has sadly lost a lot of popularity in the last 300 years, reducing its use tremendously, making it much harder to recommend spice blends that work perfectly for this spice. We can recommend trying:
- Garam Masala
For the perfect smooth blend, opt for a microplane spcie mill.
Substitutes for mace
Sometimes, nutmeg is simply not an option – perhaps you want to make a white sauce, which would be marred by the presence of nutmeg flecks, or you try to make a smooth ice cream and the grittiness of shavings simply throw the dish out. In such cases, an alternative to nutmeg is needed.
Mace, which is made out of the same fruit as nutmeg, is the closest spice that comes to mind. While there is no prices replacement for nutmeg, mace comes pretty close, especially, if extra spices are used.
Here are some great substitutes for mace in your cooking:
- Allspice: Allspice is a berry from the Jamaican Bayberry leaf which is also high in eugenol, giving it a similar woody, warm flavor. As allspice is commonly found in kitchen pantries it is a convenient replacement for mace. As such, allspice is a good partial substitue, using a 1:1 ratio.
- Nutmeg: Mace is made from the outer layer of the nutmeg seed. As nutmeg has a very similar, yet stronger flavor, you can replace mace with 1/2 the amount of nutmeg.
- Cinnamon: gound cinnanmon looks like mace and while sweeter, it has a similar taste to mace when used sparingly as an undertone. Do not use cinnamon as a substitute in recipes that call for both mace and cinnamon. Replace mace with 1/2 the amount of cinnamon.
- Cloves: in small amounts, cloves bring a warming, earthy and aromatic flavor while also numbing the palate. Just add a dash of cloves instead of nutmeg.
- Ginger: ginger has a fruity flavor with hat and zing, similar to mace when used sparingly as an infusion. Due to the potency of ginger, a quarter of the amount of mace is recomended.
- Apple pie spice: this spice mix is normally made from cinnamon, cardamom and allspice, thus already has a similar, yet sweeter taste. Simply replace the mace for this spice and reduce the amounts of the other spices if used in the recipe as well.
- Pumpkin spice: pumpkin pie spice is similar to apple pie spice mix. Some versions are made from cinnamon, ginger, cloves, allspice and sometimes mace itself. This makes a direct replacement tricky as the recipe may require these spices. Simply adjust the ratios to compensate for the pumpkin spice.
- Garam Masala: Garam masala is a popular Indian ground spice mix with cumin, cinnamon, mace, cloves, bay leaves, coriander, and cardamon. This complex mix already has mace, but can also have nutmeg added to it. As it is a complex blend, start by replacing mace with 1/2 the amount of garam masala.
Mace vs Nutmeg
Mace comes from a tropical evergreen tree that produces two distinct spices: nutmeg – the seed and mace, its lacy covering.
The main difference between fresh nutmeg and mace is that nutmeg tends to be much more woody and has far more tannins, causign the mouth to pucker up. In addition, maces is a softer material than nutmeg, discolving away more easily or grinding to a finer powder, making it better for smooth sauces and desserts such as ice cream.
Mace is waeker than nutmeg and therefore more is needed. The accepted ration is 1 teaspoon of mace = 1/2 teaspoon of nutmeg.
Recipes with Nutmeg
- Rhubarb Pie
- Poached fruits
- Custards and whipped creams
- Bechamel sauce
- Rum punch
Whole mace vs ground mace
Whole blade mace is used just like a bay leaf – simply pop the entire blade into your dish, allowing time to release its flavor into the dish. SImply popping a piece into a pot of cooking rice alters its flavor completely.
Ground mace can be made from the whole blades -simply use a coffee grinder or a grater. Store-bought mace can simply be sprinkled on a sauce or icecream when the fine powder dissolves away and while imparting its subtle taste.
Mace storage and shelf-life:
Whole mace keeps for at least a year, if stored in a sealed container kept in a cool, dark place. Discard as soon as black spots develop. Ground mace can keep for six months under the same conditions, though the flavor will fade within a month and the remaining product tends to be bitter and flat.
Mace should always be stored in a cool dry place, well away from light and heat which destroys its essential oils.