Okay, we are deep in the Pumpkin Spice season.  It’s not safe to order a cup of coffee lest you get dragged into the Anglo-Dutch Wars.  I like nutmeg and spices a lot but I think I would rather have Manhattan but the Dutch choose to keep the Maluku Islands and their special spice – nutmeg.  

Nutmeg is the seed of the evergreen tree, Myristica fragrans. The inner seed is enveloped by a bright red aril known by spice traders as mace. When the fruits are ripe, they split open revealing the crimson mace aril, signaling the spices are ready for harvest and curing. Skilled workers delicately remove the crimson veil of mace from the nut, and dry it in the sun for up to two weeks. As mace cures, its color often transitions from a bright red to a yellow-orange. The nutmegs are set on drying racks for up to two months before another layer of shell is removed and the precious nutmeg is finally exposed.

Freshly ground nutmeg has an intensely perfumed aroma that is sweet, nutty, spicy, and faintly reminiscent of mint or eucalyptus, similar to the profiles of cardamom or pine. Nutmeg is best when ground fresh from whole seeds.  Mace’s flavor and aroma differ slightly from nutmeg as its profile tends to be sharper and less sweet. The essential oils of the two spices have different chemical compositions and noticeably different flavors even though they come from the same plant. This is similar to how an orange peel will taste and smell different than the flesh.  Nutmeg trees are native to the Maluku Islands, a tiny volcanic archipelago situated 250 miles east of Indonesia.

Like nutmeg, cloves are also only native to the Maluku Islands.  These spices are the dried, unopened buds of the evergreen tree, Syzygium caryophyllata in the myrtle family. These spices have been traded by the Chinese since about the 3rd century BCE as a medicine. The spice was first used as a breath freshener; officers of the Chinese Emperor’s court were required to place cloves in their mouth before discussions with their sovereign. They were also used as tonics and stimulants and were prescribed as a digestive aid and antiseptic. Cloves were used to treat a wide range of ailments including asthma, indigestion, vomiting, toothache, laryngitis, impotence, diarrhea, cholera, and pretty much any abscess that caused pain.

For over a thousand years, these specks of land were the only source of nutmeg and mace in the world and this source was a closely guarded secret.  Even with this heavy internal trading the source of nutmeg and clove remained a mystery to the outside world for almost a millennium. The Arabs and Indians who sailed all across the Indian Ocean were long clueless about where these spices grew. “Somewhere near India is the island containing the Valley of Cloves. No merchants or sailors have ever been to the valley or have ever seen the kind of tree that produces cloves: its fruit they say is sold by genies. The sailors arrive at the island, place their items of merchandise on the shore, and return to their ship. Next morning, they find, beside each item, a quantity of cloves.”   This is how Arab spice traders began bringing mace and nutmeg to Constantinople in the 6^th Century.  To protect even the little bit of the secret they knew, these early spice traders shrouded their spices in further misinformation and spice lore, charging high prices as a result. By the 16^th and early 17^th Centuries, Portuguese and Dutch explorers managed to ‘discover’ the spices on the Maluku Islands and establish trading presences there. Eventually, the Dutch East India Trading Company seized control over all the islands except the island Rhun, which was claimed by the English. The Dutch ferociously controlled the overwhelming majority of the nutmeg trade, destroying any plantations that attempted to grow the spices in lands not under their control and enforcing their monopoly by death penalty on anyone caught trying to smuggle the trees out of the Maluku’s. In 1667, the Dutch even traded the island of Manhattan in North America (a fur trapping colony at the time) to the English for control of the island of Rhun.  All nutmeg came from the Dutch East India Company by 1667.  This monopoly would last about 100 years.

Eventually French spice traders were able to smuggle nutmeg trees to the island colony of Mauritius, and English spice traders planted nutmeg trees on Grenada breaking the monopoly.  This exotic and hence very expensive spice was now common enough for everyone to enjoy.  Eventually there would be so much nutmeg that you can’t go anywhere without being assaulted by its sweet smell. 

---

Want to have the
Regimental Brewmeister
at your site or event?

You can hire me.

https://colonialbrewer.com/yes-you-can-hire-me-for-your-event-or-site/