Mace
The lacy scarlet aril that wraps the nutmeg seed inside its fruit, peeled off by hand and dried to an amber blade. One tree yields two spices with different characters and different prices, and mace is the finer and the dearer of them.
Identity
- Botanical name
- Myristica fragrans
- Family
- Myristicaceae
- Part used
- Seed
- Origin
- The Banda Islands of Maluku, Indonesia
- Drunk in
- Maluku, Grenada, Kerala, Netherlands
Character
Nutmeg’s warmth without its weight — brighter, more peppery, a little more floral, and it does not turn soapy in a cup the way ground nutmeg readily does.
Notes: nutmeg, pepper, pine, orange peel
History
The Banda Islands were the world’s only source, and the Dutch effort to hold that monopoly in the seventeenth century is among the best-documented and most violent episodes of the spice trade. French and British transplantation to Mauritius, Grenada and Penang ended it. Grenada’s industry dates from the nineteenth century and the nut is on the national flag, which is a fair measure of what one fruit did to an economy.
How it is drunk
In South Asia javitri goes into garam masala and into spiced milk drinks. In Europe mace belongs to charcuterie, potted meats and béchamel more than to anything drunk. It appears in masala chai blends and mulling mixes in small quantities, usually alongside nutmeg rather than instead of it.
Production
The aril is peeled from the shell by hand, flattened between boards and sun-dried over several days, during which it fades from crimson to amber-orange. Whole blades are graded on colour and size and broken mace sells for much less; ground mace is where the cheap material goes and is where the distinction from nutmeg disappears fastest.
Preparation
Decoction · Steeped with milk · Blended with tea
Boiling and decoction
1–3 g/100 ml · 98–100 °C · 8 min
What gets confused
Mace and nutmeg come from the same fruit and are not interchangeable spoon for spoon. Ground mace loses its distinction from nutmeg within months; blades keep it for years. “Mace” in a British spice cupboard is this; the aerosol of the same name is unrelated to the plant.
Common mistakes
- Buying it ground. The one property that separates it from nutmeg is the first thing milling takes.
Evidence for this page
This page is TeaHQ synthesis throughout. No external source stands behind any statement on it, including the botanical name. 132 of the 204 botanicals have had their names and distribution checked against a taxonomic authority and this is not one of them.
Brewing parameters here are typical practice for the category rather than measurements of this plant, and each set says so.
This page makes no safety claim. It describes what Mace is, where it comes from and how it is prepared — not what it does to a person. The absence of a safety note here is not a statement that the plant is safe. How TeaHQ handles this.