CHEMICAL COMPOSITION OF CASSIA AND CINNAMON
Samples examined, ash of the whole being about 8 per cent. and powdered 5 per cent.:
| Ash Saigon, | 8.23 |
| Unknown Cassia, | 1.75, extreme |
| Fiber Saigon, | 26.29 |
| Fiber of Cassia Cinnamon, | 14 to 20, extreme |
| Fiber True Cinnamon, | 33.08 |
| Albuminoids Saigon, | 4.55 |
| Albuminoids Unknown Cassia, | 2.45, extreme |
| Lime True Cinnamon, | 40.09, 36.98, 40.39, in three specimens |
| Lime Cassia Lignea, | 25.29 |
| Lime “Cassia Vera,” | 52.72 |
| Magnesia, True Cinnamon, | 2.65, 3.30, 3.86, in three specimens |
| Magnesia, Cassia Lignea, | 5.48 |
| Magnesia, “Cassia Vera,” | 1.10 |
CLOVES
(Eugenia Caryophyllata of Caryophyllus Aromaticus)
1 Zanzibar
2 Amboina
3 Penang
4 Bencoolen
5 Calyx
6 Calyx
7 Flowering stem with leaves
CHAPTER X
CLOVES
Your unexpanded flower buds fair
Hold for us flavors fine and rare,
Welcome your petals in our home,
’Though Nature choose you should not bloom.
CLOVES are the unexpanded flower buds of Eugenia Caryophyllata of Caryophyllus Aromaticus, a tree belonging to the natural order Myrtacca, and are named from the French word clou, signifying nail, which it sometimes resembles.
The French word, Girofle Cloux de Girofle; German, Gewurzuelken; Persian, Meykuk; Sanskrit, Lavunga; Arabia, Kerunful; Bengalle, Lung; Malay, Chankee, Lawang; Portuguese, Cravos da India; Chinese, Thenghio; Java, Wohkayu, Lawang; Hindoo, Laung.
It is indigenous to the Molucca or, as they are frequently called, the “Spice Islands.” It was originally confined to five of these islands, viz: Tidor, Ternate, Motir, Batian, and Kian, but chiefly to the last. These constitute a string of islands westward of the large island Gilalo and, strange to say, the clove tree does not appear to do well on the large islands, such as Gilalo and Ceram and Celebes. It is probable that Booro and the Xula Isles constitute about the western limit of the successful culture of the clove. Although it is a native of small islands, it will not do well too near the sea where it receives much moisture, or at a high elevation where it is cold. Sloping loam land is best, where there is no stagnant water, 1,000 feet elevation being the limit.
The clove tree is found outside the Moluccas and Amboina, Haruka, Saparua, and Naesalaut in the following places: Guiana, Zanzibar, Pemba, Java, Sumatra, Reunion, and West Indies islands.
There are five varieties of cloves as follows:
1. The ordinary cultivated clove.
2. The female clove with pale stem, which natives call poleng.
3. The keriak or leory cloves.
4. The royal clove (which is very scarce).
5. The wild clove.
The first three are about equally valuable as spices, the female being considered best for distillation of essential oil, while the wild clove has very little aromatic flavor and no value but for adulteration.
The royal clove is a curious monstrosity, which formerly had a great reputation as the Caryophyllum regium, by reason of its rarity, and the curious observations which are made respecting it. It is a very small clove and is distinguished by an abnormal number of sepals and by large bracts at the base of the tubes of the calyx. The corolla and internal organs are imperfectly developed. In commerce the cloves are known and named from the places of growth and are graded in value in the order named—Penang ([Fig. 3]), Bencoolen ([Fig. 4]), Amboina ([Fig. 2]), Zanzibar ([Fig. 1]). They do not exhibit any very decided structural difference, but it takes 4,500 Penang cloves to weigh one pound and 5,000 Zanzibar for same weight. There also enters into commerce as a secondary product clove stalks and mother’s cloves, the latter being the dried ripe fruit. Cloves were one of the principal Oriental spices, being the basis of a rich trade from an early part of the Christian era, and the spice was well known to the ancients and certainly formed an article of commerce, during the Middle Ages, when Alleppo was the grand mart of Eastern trade.
The Portuguese discovered cloves growing abundantly on the Molucca Islands about the year 1600 and they held possession of the principal clove trade for nearly a century. Previous to this time, cloves were brought to Europe from ports in the Mediterranean, where they had been brought by Arabians, Persians, and Egyptians.
About 1605, the Portuguese were driven from the Moluccas by the Dutch, who endeavored to control the clove trade by attempting to extirpate all the clove trees growing in their native islands, and to confine the culture of the entire production to the islands of Amboina and Ternate, paying the kings of the islands of Ternate, Tidor, and Batian a tribute to permit and assist in the extirpation of the trees.
In the years 1769 and 1771, the French, under M. Poivre, made two expeditions to the Moluccas and found the clove tree growing in some small islands which had been overlooked by the Dutch. From one of these (Guebi) they obtained plants and transplanted them to the Isle of France. In 1785, there were already between 10,000 and 11,000 clove trees growing in this island. At the end of the seventeenth century, an Arab carried the clove seed from Baurbou and planted the plantation in Zanzibar at Miltoni, on the road to Cheuni, and plants were conveyed from the Isle of France to Cayenne, Dominica, and to Mauritius. About 1770, the English put such a high duty on spices in Dominica that they ruined the trade there, and although M. Buee planted the clove tree there over 100 years ago, one tree is yet living.
Meanwhile the Dutch, who favored the one principal isle, Amboina, selecting that part of it called Leytimeer and the adjoining Uliasser Islands, divided Amboina into 4,000 allotments. Each of these divisions was expected to afford sufficient space for the growth of 125 trees, and it was ordered that this number should be cultivated.
In 1720, a law was passed rendering it compulsory on the natives to make up the full complement, and accordingly 500,000 clove trees flourished within the limit of the small island, their annual aggregate product amounting to more than 1,000,000 pounds of cloves. One can scarcely imagine the beauty of these immense groves with their pinkish-white, snowdrop blossoms, the sweet perfumes of which are carried by the gentle breezes far out to sea.
The clove tree, owing to its noble height, fine form, and luxuriant foliage, is attractive in appearance. Its bark is thin and smooth and its wood exceedingly hard, but it has a grayish color, which unfits it for cabinet work. It is an evergreen and in its natural state grows to a height of from thirty to forty feet, with a straight trunk, making it the most beautiful of all known trees. When four feet high, the tree spreads into several branches with fork stems, on which leaves grow directly opposite each other. The leaves are long, ovate and smooth, narrow and indented on the edge, pointed and of a thick consistency. The color of the upper surface inclines to red, as also does the stalk, while the under surface is green. The entire tree is strongly aromatic and the petioles of the leaves have nearly the same pungency as the calyces of the flowers.
In cultivating cloves, the mother cloves are best selected fresh, as they soon lose their vitality. The fruit seed (called by the natives paleny), which have become fertilized by remaining and ripening on the trees, are first soaked in water three days, or until they begin to germinate, and are next planted in a nursery of rich mold with bud end above ground in shaded beds, six inches apart if many plants are needed, twelve inches apart for few.
Two seeds are planted in each hill in the trenches, to provide for the failure of a part of the seed to germinate, and care must be taken not to plant the seed more than two inches below the surface. The nursery beds are made about six feet wide and of any length desired, and are shaded by a flat framework of sticks three to three and one-half feet high, over which is placed grass or cocoanut leaves. The ground is watered every morning and evening by taking water in the hand from the watering pot until the seeds have developed. When the plants appear above ground they are watered every other day, and when about six inches high every ten days.
The plants are kept in the shaded beds for nine months or one year, when they will be about one foot high. After this they are gradually left to the exposure of the sun by removing the framework for one or two months, when they are transplanted. Great care is taken in moving the plants. The transplanting takes place in the rainy season. The soil is first cut around the plant by a knife or triangular-shaped spade called “moaa,” “jembe,” or hoe, and the plant is lifted with as much soil adhering to it as possible and is placed across two banana strips of fiber, which are three to four inches wide and one to two feet long. The four ends of these strips are wrapped around the plants and firmly tied together, and in that way the plants are carried to the place for planting. Before planting, the pieces of fiber are cut beneath at each corner and the plant is placed in holes dug for them, which are about thirty feet apart; the earth is heaped around them and the balance of the fiber at the top is removed. The plant is watered every day if it is very dry weather, and at intervals for a year, or until it is about eighteen inches high.
A great many plants usually die out and continually replanting is necessary. For this reason, a nursery is kept for about five years.
After the clove garden is planted there is no need of shading, but as the trees have only a slight hold in the ground, they are easily destroyed. They should be planted in sheltered situations. For example, a hurricane which visited Zanzibar in 1872 destroyed nine-tenths of the clove groves, but the adjoining island of Pemba did not suffer nearly so much, especially on the west side of the island, which was fairly well protected. For this reason the clove trees are protected by belted double rows of casuarina and cerbera trees. Cocoanut trees are also planted at irregular places among the clove trees. The slaves, who have their own small orchards, often plant cassava, cocoanut, and mangoes with the clove not only for shelter but to secure extra crops from the other trees. In Amboina the young trees are planted in old clove orchards for shelter, and when the young trees grow up the old trees are cut down. A clayey substratum, dark yellow or volcanic earth, intermingled with gravel and dark loam, with a small amount of sand to reduce its tenacity, is the best soil. Marshy soil is fatal. Plants obtained from a garden of self-sown seeds are the best, but sometimes young branches are laid down and kept moist, when they will take root in about six months. Clove trees after being well rooted require but little care, and as the clove tree attracts much moisture, little other herbage will grow beneath it, but they must be kept well weeded or the trees will run into wild cloves. New leaves form in the wet season in May, the old leaves dropping off as new ones come, and soon after the leaves are out the germ of fruit is discovered and the tree begins to bear.
The clove tree needs no pruning with the exception of topping, and no manuring except by leaves which fall from the trees, which are very good fertilizers.
The flowers are of a delicate pink color and grow at the extremity of the branches. There are from nine to fifteen flowers in a cluster. These clusters, or branched peduncles, are arranged in tricahatomous terminal cymes, jointed to the branches. The unexpanded corolla forms a ball on the top of the bud between four of the calyces. The calyx is elongated and to it the ovary is united. It tapers downward and is the cup of the unripe fruit seed, giving the seed the resemblance of the clove (garafa, which is no doubt a corruption of the French word girofle).
As soon as the corolla begins to fade the calyx changes its color, first to yellow and green ([Fig. 6]), and then to red ([Fig. 5]), and, together with the embryo seed, which is about the size of a small pea, is at this stage of its growth the clove of commerce and is ready for harvesting. If it is allowed to remain on the tree three weeks longer it will gradually swell, forming an oblong berry containing one or two cells and as many seeds. It is then ripe, and is known as the mother clove (by the native, paleng). It has then lost the pungent property of the clove and will have entirely lost its value as a spice, and is valuable only for seed.
The clove, then, we find composed of two parts. The part we use is the flower clove. It is about six-tenths of an inch in length. It has a long cylindrical calyx, dividing above into four pointed spreading sepals, which surround four petals or leaves that are the unexpanded flowers. Thus the filaments are rolled into a globular bud or head of the clove, which is about two-tenth of an inch in diameter. The parts may be seen by soaking the clove in water, when the leaves will soften and unroll. The petals are of a light color on account of their numerous oil cells, which spring from the base of a four-sided epigynous disc with angles directed towards the lobes of the calyx. The stamens are very numerous, being inserted at the base of the petals and arched over the style, which is short and sublate and rises from depressions in the center of the disc. Immediately below it, and united with the upper portion of the calyx, is the ovary, which is two-celled and contains many ovules.
The lower end of the calyx (hypanthium) has a compressed form, is solid, but has internal tissues which are far more porous than the walls, the whole calyx being of a deep, rich brown color. It has a dull, wrinkled surface and dense, fleshy texture, and abounds in essential oil which exudes on a simple pressure of the finger nail.
The clove tree is not subject to any fungoid disease, but it suffers from a caterpillar which often strips the leaves in dry weather, but the tree will soon recover after the rain sets in. The white ant also attacks the root. No remedy is undertaken for either of these pests. A worm also insinuates itself into the wood and thousands of trees sometimes perish from its work.
Harvesting should begin as soon as the fruit is at the proper stage and should be rushed with as much haste as is possible, or much of the crop may be lost by over-ripening. As all buds do not mature at one time, it takes about three weeks to complete the harvest.
Cloths are first spread on the ground beneath the tree. The fruit must be picked mostly by hand. Although the twigs are easily broken, the harvesting is very tedious. Four-sided ladders or movable stages are used for the lower limbs and seed poles for beating the fruit from the upper branches, which cannot be reached from the ladders. The limbs of the tree are so brittle that great care must be taken not to break them, lest the crop for the next year be injured. Boys and girls from ten to fourteen years old, are the best help for gathering the fruit. The clove and clove stems are both gathered at the same time, and are dried on mats to prevent fermentation. Those which fall from the tree are dried in the sunshine. They have a shriveled appearance, dull color, little essential oil, and are of inferior value. The flowers are next dried, when they assume the brown color of the clove. The finest cloves are dark-brown with a full, perfect head free from moisture. The inferior are smaller and poorer in essential oil. The drying process is usually by simple exposure to the sun for several days on mats, but in some places the flowers are smoked on hurdles covered with matting near a slow fire. In a few cases they have been scalded in hot water before smoking. After the drying process, they are ready for packing, if they are brittle or readily break between the fingers.
HARVESTING CLOVES
Cloves are now exported in large amounts from Zanzibar and its neighboring island Pemba, twenty miles distant. They are cultivated there by all classes, from the Sultan to the humblest of his subjects. Zanzibar cloves, being very dry, do not lose much in weight by drying and may be stored for some time and will not mold, but the Pemba production arrives in a damp condition and must be sold or milled at once to save loss from shortage. The Zanzibar cloves are larger than the Pemba variety and have a reddish head by which they may be known, while the dry Pemba cloves, by reason of the greater amount of moisture they contain, have a darker color. The Zanzibar cloves, being well cultivated, are very fine, but the Pemba, having more rains, have an advantage over the Zanzibar in quantity, but they are lacking in quality. Zanzibar Island is fifty miles long by twenty miles wide, and alone produces 7,000,000 pounds of cloves annually, and Pemba a much larger quantity. Pemba is divided into two districts, Weti in the north and Chaki in the south. The two islands produce 90 per cent. of all the cloves raised in the world.
Whole cloves have a great affinity for water. Some exporters have taken advantage of the fact by attempting to place their sacks in a position aboard vessels where they may imbibe water and increase their weight, much to the detriment of the clove.
Cloves in their natural state lose from 50 to 60 per cent. in drying. One frasila of thirty-five pounds of freshly gathered cloves is equal to but half a frasila when dried. The difference in shortage between cloves at Zanzibar and on their arrival in Europe is about 8 per cent. Only about two-thirds of a clove garden is depended on for bearing, one-third being allowed for barren young trees. The tree in its native islands begins to bear when from four to five years old and is at its prime at twelve years; but in Amboina and other Molucca islands, Haruka, Saparua, and Naesalaut, it does not bear much until it is from ten to twelve years old, and it requires much more attention.
The tree yields but one crop each year, which, on an average, is about seven pounds. A good healthy orchard at maturity produces about 375 pounds to the acre, less one-third for young trees, or about 300 pounds. The yield is often fifteen to twenty pounds to a tree, and we have records of trees which bore as high as seventy-five pounds at the age of 150 years. The ordinary life of a tree is from twenty to thirty years, though it varies much in different localities. When the clove tree becomes old and worthless for bearing it will have a ragged appearance.
Cloves are shipped to native ports in hides and are sometimes exported in sacks made from split cocoanut leaves, containing 133⅓ pounds each, called “piculs,” also in twenty-two-pound packages called “kilos.” They are more often exported in double mats in bags called “frales,” of eighty to 100 pounds (called by the natives “mankunda”). These bags are preferred to gunny sacks, though there is more shortage, a fact which is strangely marked, since the mats, though double, admit a large amount of dampness.
CITY OF ZANZIBAR
VIEW OF ZANZIBAR HARBOR
The average annual consumption of cloves throughout the world has been estimated at 11,000,000 pounds. No cloves were exported from Singapore in the year 1904, but the city of Penang exported in that year $7,373.91 worth, and Colombo, Ceylon, exported 115 hundred weight of cloves and mace in the same year. A transverse section of the lower part of a clove shows a dark rhomboid zone, the tissue on either side of which is of a lighter hue, which is chiefly made up of about thirty fibro-vascular bundles, another stronger bundle traversing the center of the clove. The outer layer of this, beneath the epidermis and belonging to it, we find to be a debris of no apparent structure, consisting of numerous cells and fibro-vascular bundles within their spiral vessels, with deep shreds of brown cellular matter attached. There are also tissues bordering on the oil cells. These cells are frequently as many as 300 micro-millimeters in diameter.
About 200 oil cells may be counted in one transverse section, so that the large amount of essential oil in the drug is well shown by its microscopic character. Pollen grains and sometimes whole anthers are present and concretions of oxalate of lime.
The fibro-vascular bundles, as well as the tissues bordering on the oil cells, assume a greenish-black hue on coming in contact with alcoholic perchloride of iron. Oil cells are largely distributed in the leaves and petals but no starch is found in them.
The clove is very rich in essential oil, containing a greater proportion than any other plant. The oil has a greater specific gravity than water and, therefore, sinks in it. Water extracts very little of the flavor of cloves. The oil combined with resinous matter in cloves gives them their pungency, and their aromatic property depends on the amount of oil they contain.
In studying the structure of both the whole or the powdered cloves, an examination for starch in the powder should first be made in water, as the starch granules swell by the use of the chloral-hydrate solution. This solution must be used, however, as the sections and fragments will not be transparent without it.
Cloves are ground on common burr stone, but great care must be taken in grinding since they contain so much oil. The best powdered cloves present a rich meal of reddish-brown color and are a good preventive of moths, but they deteriorate very rapidly. The natives of China and India use cloves to flavor their rice; the oil is also used for medicinal purposes. Cloves, stems, and leaves are shipped in large quantities from Zanzibar for adulterating the powdered clove and are called “vikunia”; by the native, “swahil”; French, “griffers de girofle,” “peduncles de girofle”; Italy, “fustiand bastoreni”; Latin, “stiptes caryophylli.” They form a dull, gray-colored powder and yield only 5 to 6 per cent. of volatile oil, and, of course, have only a corresponding percentage of the strength or value of the true clove (the root yields 0.04 per cent.). On account of their near appearance in color and flavor to the powdered clove, and particularly for their cheapness, they are much sought for by the miller of spices, as he can thus sell his mixture at a price much below the market value of the true powdered clove. This adulterant may be easily detected by the microscope, which will reveal their thick-walled, hard, flinty stone cells and long, yellow, fibrous tissue, as similar structures are not found in the cloves in such abundance. The fruit of the clove, if added, contains starch granules, which are not present in the meal of the leaves and stems. Often the essential oil is pressed from the whole cloves and they are then rubbed in oil between the hands and mixed with cloves which drop from the trees; both are then mixed with good cloves, and all are sold as prime stock. They are, however, easily detected by their pale color and shrunken appearance and lack of pungency. On one occasion several bags of artificial whole cloves arrived in London from Zanzibar, neatly manufactured by machinery from soft deal wood stained a dark color and soaked in a solution of essence of cloves to give them the required scent. Upon investigation it was found that this manufactured article had been imported into Zanzibar from America.
A great many flowers of plants contain the flavor or perfumes of cloves. Among these are the flowers of the lettsomia bana-nox, called by the natives of Bangal “kulmiluta.” The flowers which are produced in rainy seasons are large and pure white, expanding at sunset with a strong flavor of cloves, but they wither at sunrise. Sometimes the flower buds of Dicypellium caryophyllatum of Brazil, which has a bark called clove cassia, are used as substitute for cloves (also called Brazilian clove bark).
Cloves are largely adulterated with roasted rye and when the price of cloves is high, pimento or Jamaica pepper is often used as a mixture. This adulterant may be detected by the microscope by reason of the thick walls of the cells, which are not present in cloves, as well as by the quantity of starch granules which are not visible in the ground clove.
The essential oil of cloves is a mixture of two oils, one a hydrocarbon isomeric with oil of turpentine and the other an oxygenated oil eugenol or eugenic acid, which possesses the taste and odor of cloves, depending on the amount of eugenol it contains. This amount may be estimated by separation as follows: Shake three parts of the oil with a solution composed of one part caustic potash or soda in ten parts of water; press the crystalline paste of eugenol alkali which forms; take off the press residue with water; decompose with hydrochloric acid; wash the liberated eugenol with water, dry it with calcium chloride and then rectify.
Clove oil is often adulterated with phenol. This adulterant may be detected by shaking the oil with fifty times its volume of hot water; after cooling, it is decanted and concentrated at a gentle heat to a small bulk; then a drop of liquid ammonia and a pinch of chloride are dropped on the surface; if phenol is present the liquor will assume a green color, which changes to a blue shade, which will remain for a number of days; if not adulterated, no coloration will be produced. Clove oil is first colorless, or yellow, and darkens with age and by exposure to the air. It consists of sesquialteral and an oxygenated oil, the first passing over with vapor of water, called “light oil of cloves.”
When the crude oil is distilled with strong potash of lye, its composition is C15H24, specific gravity 0.190 at 15 degrees C., its boiling point 251 degrees to 254 degrees C., its optical power being very light.
The other, which is the eugenol, is the chief constituent. Its composition is C10H12O2. This constituent exists to the extent of 76 to 85 per cent., while very fine may contain 90.64 per cent. in the oil of cloves, in direct proportion to the quality of the product.
Good oil of cloves should have a specific gravity of 1.067 at 15 degrees C., and should be freely soluble in alcohol at 90 per cent. An adulteration by turpentine would lower the specific gravity and diminish the solubility in alcohol. Eugenol is a strongly refractive liquid with the characteristic smell and the burning taste of cloves, and by exposure to the air it becomes brown; on fusion with caustic potash it yields protocatechuic acid convertible into vanillin by action of potassium permanganate. Eugenol is also found in pimento and in the leaves of cinnamon and of many other trees and has been artificially produced by the action of sodium amalgam on coniferyl alcohol. Pure eugenol has a specific gravity of 1.072 at 15 degrees; its boiling point is 253 degrees to 243 degrees C., and it forms a clear solution in 1 per cent. of caustic potash solution.
Clove oil has been found to contain some salicylic acid, which gives the greenish blue coloration when it is brought in contact with an alcoholic solution of perchloride of iron, and produces the intense violet color when it is agitated with metallic reduced iron. This acid may be isolated by agitating the oil with a solution of carbonate of ammonia. Caryophyllin (C10H18O), a neutral, tasteless, inodorous substance, isomeric with common camphor, crystallizable in prismatic needles, has also been found in cloves by extracting with ether cloves previously deprived of the greater part of their essential oil by a little alcohol.
Cloves also contain 16 per cent. of a peculiar tannic acid, 13 per cent. of gum, and about 18 per cent. of water and extractive matter.
The chemical composition of cloves differs to quite an extent in the different countries where they grow—Amboina, 19 per cent.; Zanzibar, 17.5 per cent.
| Water, | 11.00 to 2.75 |
| Ash, | 13.00 to 5.00 |
| Volatile Oil, | 21.00 to 9.00 |
| Fixed Oil and Resin, | 11.00 to 4.00 |
| Crude Fiber, | 10.00 to 6.00 |
| Albuminoids, | 8.00 to 4.00 |
Coffee oil is least volatile of any essential oil and is obtained from the flower buds and the flower stalks of cloves by aqueous distillation. This distillation is largely carried on in England, and the proportion of oil may amount to 16 or 20 per cent., but, to extract the whole, distillation must be long continued; the water being returned to the same material. The oil is a colorless or yellowish liquid like all clove oil, with a powerful odor and flavor of cloves, varying in specific gravity from 1.046 to 1.058. It combines well with grease, soap, and spirits, and is largely used in perfumery, and in Germany it is often adulterated with carbolic acid (phenol).
GINGER. (Amomum Zingiber)
1 Leaf stalk
2 Flowers
3 Cochin ginger
4 African
5 Jamaica
CHAPTER XI
GINGER
Ginger black or ginger white
Will furnish warmth in coldest night.
Without ginger how many would miss
A ginger cookie for little Sis.
GINGER (officinale (Roscoe) amomum zingiber, national order zingiberaceoe Linn., monandria monogynia).
French, Gingembre; German, Ingwer; Latin, Zingiber; Italian, Zenzevero; Spanish, Gengibre; Portuguese, Gengiuare.
As a rule, spices grow above ground, but ginger is an exception, it being the roots or rhizomes of Zingiber. The root is herbaceous and creeping, tuberous, and of a somewhat flattened roundish form, marked with rings.
It is difficult to fix the original habits of the ginger plant, and it appears to be an unsettled question as to its native country, whether it be Asia or Brazil, but in its wild state it would suggest Asia. Its history dates back to a very early period.
Vincent’s “Commerce and Navigation of the Ancients” speaks of the imports of it from the Red Sea into Alexandria in the second century. It has been known in India from a very remote period, the Greek and Latin names for ginger being derived from the Sanskrit. The Greek name for ginger is conceded to have been taken from its Persian application.
Ginger is indigenous to China, and many leading authorities aver that it derives its name ginger in China, where it formerly grew abundantly, and that the plant was first called gingi at that place. It was common in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries and was next in value to pepper, which was most common of all spices.
It was thought by the Greeks and Romans to have been a product of Southern Arabia and was received by them by way of the Red Sea. Pliny describes it as coming from Arabia. The Romans fixed a duty on ginger, which is mentioned among other Indian spices, and ginger is mentioned in the lists of dutiable goods of the Middle Ages, showing that it constituted an important item of commerce between Europe and the East. This duty was levied in Paris in 1296; Barcelona, 1221; Marseilles, 1228. Ginger appears to have been well known in England before the Norman conquest, since it is often referred to in the Anglo-Saxon books of the eleventh century.
Marco Polo appears to have seen the ginger plant, both in India and China, about 1280, and some of the missionary friars who visited India about 1292 give a description of the plant and refer to it as being dug up and transplanted. The Venetian merchants in the early part of the fifteenth century describe the plant as seen by them in India, and, though the Venetians received ginger by way of Egypt, some of the superior kinds were taken from India overland via Afghanistan, Persia, and Turkey, and the Black Sea, then through the Dardanelles to the Mediterranean and to the European market. Francis de Mendoza is said to have first introduced it into America in 1547, bringing it from the East Indies.
There is good proof of its having been shipped for commercial purposes from San Domingo in 1585, and as early as 1547 considerable quantities were sent from the West Indies to Spain.
The plant endures a wide range of climate. It may be grown at the sea level or in high mountain regions, providing the rainfall be abundant or irrigation be adapted. It is found cultivated from the Himalaya Mountains, 5,000 feet above sea level, to Cape Comorin.
It is now found in Southeastern Asia, in some of the islands of the Malayan Archipelago, on the west coast of Africa, in South America, and the West Indies, and, in fact, almost all warm countries, including China and Japan, which are large exporters of ginger. The city of Calcutta (City of Palaces), from two words, Kali-ghatta, signifying the landing place of the Goddess Kali, in Bengal India, exports more than any other city in the world. The finest white ginger, which is most in demand, comes from Jamaica. The acreage is not large, amounting to only 350 acres in 1891; it probably does not now much exceed 400 acres, but improved methods of cultivation have increased the average yield per acre to a large amount. Ginger is found in the following districts of India: Mahur, Massa, Patra, Darra, Kothi, Kotahi, Bagal, and Jayal. It is found throughout the Kwang-tung province, China. The district of Nan-hai, which belongs to the city of Canton, produces a greater quantity and better quality than any other of the neighboring districts. The independent tribes of the Miso-tsu, in the mountains of the northwestern border of the same province, produce much ginger, as does also Cochin China, from which the famous Cochin ginger derives its name. In the district of Hsin-hsing, about thirty miles south of the city of Chao-Ching, on the West River, three-tenths of the flatland and seven-tenths of the cultivated soil in the hills are planted with ginger. A distinction is made between flatland ginger (in Canton dialect ten-keung) which is generally soft and tender, and mountain ginger (shan keung) which is brittle and pungent.
Three kinds of ginger were known among the merchants of Italy about the middle of the fourteenth century.
The first was belledi or baladi (an Arabic name), which, as applied to ginger, would signify “country” or “wild,” and denotes common ginger.
Second: Calombina, which refers to Calumbum, Kolam or Quilon, a port in Travancore, frequently mentioned in the Middle Ages.
Third: Micchino, a name which denoted that the spice had been brought from or by way of Mecca.
BIRD’S-EYE VIEW OF COCHIN
CLEAN AND AIRY CHOWRINGHEE ROAD (Esplanade at Left)
LOOKING NORTH OVER CALCUTTA, INDIA
Copyright by Underwood and Underwood, N. Y.
It is inferred from the examination of specimens of preserved ginger that are sent abroad from China that the Chinese have a species unknown in other countries. This inference is in harmony with the well-known Chinese secretiveness, a characteristic of this strange people which is not only inbred but also inborn. It is possible, however, that some other plant which is not true ginger may be used in making the celebrated Canton preserved ginger, but, while this possibility is suspected, it has not been proven.
The British and American markets derive their supply of ginger from various parts of the world. The principal kinds found in commerce are Jamaica ([Fig. 5]), Cochin ([Fig. 3]), and African ([Fig. 4]), the Sierra Leone district producing the bulk of the African. Although each of these in its turn has several varieties and qualities, the best and most valued kind of all is Jamaica ([Fig. 5]), and next to it is the Cochin ([Fig. 3]). The Cochin when bleached resembles Jamaica to some extent. Ginger is classified into several species, as the narrow leaf, the broad leaf, and the Japanese red leaf; the narrow leaf being the most esteemed.
Ginger thrives best on rich clay or cool loam soil that is well drained. New land which has been plowed but two or three times is best adapted to its cultivation. The ground should be dug up and cleared of weeds. The plant will not grow in dry sand or hard clay soil.
Ginger, being an underground stem of tuberous-appearing roots, takes its botanical name, rhizome, from the Spanish word rais, a root. These roots are known in commerce as races, and in Jamaica as hands, from their irregular palmate form. The real roots are the fibers thrown off the rhizomes.
It is a perennial, reed-like plant, similar in appearance to our iris or flag root, two aerial stems being thrown up from each of the underground roots ([Fig. 1]), which soon rise above ground to the height of three or four feet. The first of the shoots thrown up bears the leaves, and the second or shorter stem, the flowers, which blossom in August (rhodon) or September. At this time the ground will be covered by the spread of the leaves which wither and fade at the close of the year, when the root is in a ripe state and is ready for harvesting. The leaves are alternate, bright-green, smooth, and tapering or lanceolate at both ends, with very short petioles which gradually diverge from the stem until they are nearly horizontal, seven or eight inches in length.
The flowers are borne on the shorter separate stem ([Fig. 2]), averaging from six to twelve inches high at the apex of the stems. They appear in dense, ovate, oblong, cane-like spikes from two to three inches long, composed of obtuse, strongly imbricated bracts or scales with membranous margins between each bract, enclosing a single small yellowish-white sessile flower with purple or blue marking, and have an agreeable fragrance.
The ginger planting takes place in March and April when the rainy season begins. The cleared lands are made into beds with a little raised edge which forms trenches between the beds (see [illustration]), with openings between to allow the water to run off, for, if allowed to stand on the beds, it will cause the tubers to rot, and sometimes the beds are raised between the rows to eighteen-inch squares, two rows being planted on each ridge, the sides being perpendicular. Propagation is effected by divisions of the protuberances of the roots which are broken in small pieces, one or two inches in length, care being taken to leave at least one short bud on each cutting; they are then planted in well-broken beds four inches deep, in the manured holes in the trenches made in the beds which are nine to twelve inches apart and are shaded with bushes, which are replaced in ten days by twigs. The land must be kept well weeded during May, June, and July. It is well to cover the land half an inch deep with a mold of dead leaves, and when it rains the water will be impregnated with manure which filters readily through the leaves to the roots, and they must be kept watered in dry times.
The rhizome sometimes grows to a great size; often a single root will weigh one pound. It is a great impovisher of land and the same ground should not be used more than two consecutive years, and it is better to use it but one year. The yield is 4,000 pounds and upwards to an acre, each plant producing about eight tubers, and eight to ten times more in weight than the amount planted.
MAKING A GINGER GARDEN
HOEING GINGER
The ginger of commerce varies in form from single joints an inch or less in length to flattish, irregularly branched pieces of several joints from three to four inches long. Each branch has a depression at its summit, showing the former attachment of a leafy stem. The color in its natural state is a pale buff. It has a somewhat rough or fibrous appearance, breaking with a short, mealy fracture, and presenting on the surface of the broken parts numerous short, bristly fibers. When young, it has a light color, internally soft, and changing to greenish. As it grows older it becomes grey outside and reddish internally. When ready for digging the texture becomes fibrous and firm and heavy, and when dried it is covered with wrinkled striated brown integuments which give it a crude appearance, which is less developed on the flat surface and, internally, it is less bright and delicate than ginger from which the cuticle part has been removed. The best pieces of ginger root are collected at the harvest and thrown into heaps and covered with cow manure to keep the roots from drying for the next planting.
The scraped ginger, or marrow, has a pale hue and breaks readily and moderately short, the younger and terminal portions appearing pale yellow, being soft and starchy, while the longer transverse sections of the more perfect and outer parts are hard, flinty, and resinous, surrounding a farinaceous center which has a speckled appearance from the cut extremities of the fibers and ducts. The external layer of coated ginger is separated, about one millimeter broad, by a fine line from the whitish mealy interior portion, through the tissue of which numerous vascular bundles and resin cells are irregularly scattered. The external tissue consists of loose outer layer and an inner composed of tubular cells. These are followed by peculiar short parenchymatous cells, the walls of which are sinuous on a transverse section, and partially thickened, imparting a horny appearance. This delicate, felted tissue forms the striated surface of scraped ginger and is the principal seat of the resin and volatile oil, which here fill large spaces, the principal constituents being of the parenchymatous cells loaded with starch and resin. The volatile oil gives ginger its odor; the resin, pungency. The starch granules are irregularly spherical in form, attaining at the utmost forty millimeters in diameter. Certain varieties of ginger, owing to the starch having been rendered gelatinous by scalding, are throughout horny and translucent. The circle of vascular bundles which separates the outer layers and the central portion is narrow and has the structure of the corresponding circle or nucleus sheath of tumeric. (See [illustrations 12, 13, 14], Chap. III; illustration 12 shows ginger adulterated; 13 and 14 pure.) Coated ginger has usually a less bright, delicate hue than ginger from which the cuticle part has been removed, much of it being dark, horny, and resinous.
Ginger differs in quality and in commercial value in different localities. It is also influenced by the cultivation, harvesting, and preparation, but all true ginger has the same starchy, fibrous rhizome; the best quality is plump, with little or no epidermis, while the inferior quality is frequently coated and is not so plump.
Borneo or Cochin ([Fig. 3]) (or bleached ginger) is said to be produced by submitting the root to the action of the fumes of burning sulphur or by washing it in chloride of lime, but by chemical analysis it has been found that the bleached appearance is due to the application of common whitewash to the root, which is dusted over while wet with marble dust. This treatment, of course, injures the quality of the root.
KINGSTON, JAMAICA
The Cochin ginger is what is called the white ginger. It is prepared by washing and scraping the roots one at a time. This process takes much time, and the only benefit to be derived from it is that it makes the root more agreeable to the eye, and for that reason causes it to bring a much higher price.
At the time of digging the rhizomes boiling is kept in the field with frequent changing of water, and the roots intended for market are plunged into the boiling water and allowed to remain for about ten minutes. This process injures the aromatic spirits of the ginger.
At the first of the year, in January or February, the harvesting takes place. The form in which ginger is harvested differs in different countries. In some countries the ginger is dried with the epidermis removed. This is known as scraped ginger. In other countries the ginger is harvested without removing the epidermis. These two forms of the product are known commercially as coated and uncoated ginger. The scraped ginger is exported mostly from Cochin and Brazil, the coated from Africa and from a district of India, and is known as Malabar ginger. It is exported from the city of Calcutta.
When the roots are first dug they are placed in baskets suspended by ropes and are pulled by two men with ropes at each end of the basket for two hours each day for two days, giving them a good shaking up to remove the scales and rootlets. The rhizomes are next spread on a raised platform to dry for eight days and are then shaken, when two more days’ drying puts them in keeping state for the market. They are put up in parcels of one hundred pounds each. The product is known as black ginger.
With proper care much money might be made by cultivating ginger in India, but since this crop receives but little care it has but a small market value. The roots many times are cared for by simply smearing with cow manure. They are hung about huts to dry and become shriveled and dirty, and although they may be well smoked, they will be badly bored by the bamboo insects.
India ginger is quite similar to African and is known in commerce as Calcutta (not shown in illustration), from the city of export and is largely used for flavoring. It also is superior for ginger snaps, ginger beer, and ginger wine.
The African and Barbadoes differ from the India by the epidermis being less shriveled. They are not so hard or dark, and are sometimes scraped and bleached and made white by the chemical process of chloride of lime, a process which impairs the quality of the product but increases its market value. The bleaching and coating with gypsum or carbonate of lime is a process often applied to old and inferior roots to make them salable by making them more attractive to the eye. The Jamaica is the best ginger and is always told by its pale, bright-yellow color. The real marrow or white ginger (Zingiber album) is obtained from the scraped Jamaica ginger, which is free from resin and will give up properties to water very readily, a fact which makes it very valuable for medicinal use.
China preserved ginger has a more agreeable aromatic flavor than that of the West Indies, and the celebrated Canton preserved excels all other preserved ginger. The syrup waters drawn off are used for cool drinks. Canton exported for the first quarter of the year 1905 650 piculs of preserved ginger of 133 pounds each.
When the tubers are intended for sugar-pressed ginger, they are dug in early spring, while green, to obtain that which is young, tender, and full of juice. The soft, succulent, perennial rhizomes at such times rarely exceed five to six inches in length and are known as green ginger. They are buried in another place for a month and are then dried in the sunshine for one day, after which they are fit for green ginger.
CANTON, CHINA
MANDEVILLE, JAMAICA
Preserved ginger (Condition Zangibaris) is prepared by cleaning the green root, which is dug when young and tender and full of sap, before it is hard and woody, and scalding it until it is sufficiently tender. It is next put into cold water and peeled and scraped gradually, an operation which may last three or four days, the water being changed often. After this it is put into glass jars and covered with a thin or weak syrup which, in two or three days, is changed for a richer syrup. Sometimes even a third syrup is poured off for the fourth and yet thicker syrup, but not often. The syrup will be very thick and the ginger will be bright and nearly transparent. The following rule for making preserved ginger is infallible: Let the young tubers boil for twenty-four hours, then peel off the discolored and hard parts. Next boil one pound loaf sugar in six pints of water and pour the syrup over twelve pounds of the cooked ginger in a jar. Let it stand for one week, when the syrup is drawn off and the ginger is again boiled and treated to another syrup like the first and left to stand another week, when again the syrup should be drawn off through a fine sieve. Return the ginger to the stone jar and pour over it the final syrup, made of twelve pints of boiling water and twelve pounds of loaf sugar, boiled and stirred until it is as thick as good honey, and will drop slowly from a silver spoon, the ginger having been previously covered with boiling water and allowed to remain until cool. It is next placed in the bottles or jars for which it is intended, in small pieces, as closely as they will pack, up to the cork, so that there will be no room for air. It is then corked with a good, new cork. Candied ginger is dried, sprinkled with sugar, and is imported in boxes.
In order to powder ginger root it must first be passed through a cracker machine, as it is called, to reduce it to a proper size for feeding in a mill. The mill consists of a roller provided with very coarse teeth, which revolve through similar stationary teeth; the material is retained by a semi-circular perforated plate until it is reduced to the size of the perforation, or about the size of a coffee bean, when it is then ready for the burr stones.
In ground ginger little of its structure is seen beyond the starchy grains which can readily be distinguished by their shape and by their fibrous, vascular bundles which are easily traceable. In the unscraped ginger the outer horny layer is to be seen, but not distinct in its character at any time, and when scalding of the rhizomes takes place, the starch grains are swollen and it is more difficult to find the foreign particles. Good powdered ginger should have the fibers taken out by sifting.
The best ginger cuts pale, but bright, with a varied color, both outside and inside. Its consistency is ascertained by cutting, and varies from hard to soft or, as is termed in the trade, flinty, the soft being the best. The popular medicinal stimulant known as Jamaica ginger extract is an alcoholic extract of ginger root, and is often resorted to by old topers who can no longer be satisfied with whiskey.
Salable essence of ginger is made by taking one pint of strong tincture of the finest Jamaica, to which add in small portions at a time finely powdered slacked lime, shaking vigorously after each addition, until the tincture ceases to lose color, then throw the whole upon a filter and pass through the residue proof spirit until the product will measure two pints. Next add, drop by drop, diluted sulphuric acid until the rich yellow of the tincture suddenly disappears. Let it stand twenty-four hours, dilute with water to four pints, and shake with a little powdered pumice or silica and filter at 0 degrees C., if possible.
Ginger lozenges are used as a confectionery which frequently benefits dyspepsia and generally encourages flesh.
Ginger-beer powders are made by mixing two ounces of white sugar with twenty-six grains of bicarbonate of soda, five grains of powdered ginger, and one drop of essence of lemon, put in white paper. In blue paper put half ounce of tartaric acid. In drinking use in the same way as seidlitz powder.
The following is a good recipe for making ginger beer, and it has a high medical authority as yielding a very superior beverage, and one that will keep for several months: White sugar, twenty pounds; lemon juice, eighteen fluid ounces; honey, one pound; bruised ginger, twenty-two ounces; water, eighteen gallons. Boil the ginger in three gallons of water for half an hour, then add the sugar, the lemon juice, and the honey with the remainder of the water, and strain through a cloth; when cold, add the white of one egg and half an ounce of essence of lemon; after standing for four or five days, bottle. The bottles should be laid on their sides in a cellar, and the beer is ready for use in about three weeks. If a little yeast has been used the beer is ready in about two days, but in this case the beer does not keep well.
MONTEGO
PORT ROYAL, JAMAICA
The principal consumption of ginger is not only as a useful aromatic spice, but when applied to the nostrils it acts as an irritant and produces sneezing. The native doctors prize it highly as a stimulant. It is especially valued for paralytic and rheumatic troubles, and also for intermittent fevers. Europeans often use infusions of ginger for delicate nerves in place of tea. The green root cut into strips and steeped is thought to be superior to the dried root.
Rhizome chewed relieves toothache and powerfully increases the flow of saliva, and to the stomach it operates as a stimulant, first to the alimentary canal and, secondly, to the body in general, especially the organs of respiration. In enfeebled and relaxed habits, especially of old and gouty individuals, it promotes digestion and relieves flatulency and spasms of the stomach and bowels. It checks and prevents nausea and griping, which is sometimes produced by some drastic purgative, and a ginger plaster when applied to the forehead will relieve headache. When powdered and used with hot water and applied externally it produces a sensation of intense heat, and slight redness, and adds cordial qualities to the tonic.
Powdered ginger may be taken in doses of ten grains or more in the form of a pill or in tea. When used to excess, however, it is very dangerous, as it slowly destroys the lining of the stomach and causes lingering pain and agonizing death.
Ginger contains a great deal of alcohol. This fact accounts for the formation of the so-called ginger habit to which the victim becomes a slave as to the whiskey, opium, or tobacco habit. Indulgence in this habit is more dangerous because ginger is supposed to be harmless.
A careful qualitative examination of the character of the extracts at times may reveal the presence of an adulterant, but the chief dependence is examination under the microscope. The microscope, however, will not reveal the presence of exhausted ginger, and a careful study of the effect of exhaustion on the proximate composition of the ground root is, therefore, desirable. It would naturally increase the relative percentage of fiber and albuminoids and starch, and diminish that of the extract matter.
There is a variety of ginger known and cultivated by the Chinese under the name of Galangal A. officinarom. It is very thick and slightly flattened and is prized by the Siamese and Chinese as a substitute for ginger. In Siam it is known as Alpinia. There is also a variety found and cultivated in Siam similar to Alpinia allughas, called luk reu or bastard cardamom, which has the cardamom-like fruit. Ginger usually comes to New York in 110 to 120-pound bags and 130-pound barrels.
The yield of oil from ginger is from 1.9 to 2.7 per cent., having a specific gravity at 15 degrees C. of 0.880 to 0.885, and an optical rotation of 25 to 40 degrees in a 100-millimeter tube.
The chemical composition of ginger oil remains unknown, but it is known to contain camphene and other ingredients; its complex nature is indicated by the wide range of its boiling point.
When distilled, after drying over CaCl2, the boil begins to pass over at 140 degrees C., accompanied by a few drops of aqueous fluid, the temperature constantly and rapidly rising to about 240 degrees, the chief portion of the oil coming over between 240 degrees and 270 degrees C. and a little passes over between 270 degrees and 300 degrees, but evidently accompanied by decomposition products, a transparent, brown, tenacious, semi-solid residue remaining in flask.
The lower boiling products retain the ginger aroma, which is noted when diluted with spirits, and are much more soluble in rectified spirits than higher fractions. Oil of ginger is yellow in color and its odor is intensely like that of the root; that of Jamaica is the most fragrant, but has not the burning, pungent taste of ginger, which is due to gingerol, the active pungent principle of the root.
Gingerol exists in the dried rhizomes to the extent of from 0.600 to 1.450 per cent. It is of a pale straw color and odorless, with a pungent, bitter taste. It is soluble in alcohol in even 50 per cent. dilution; it is also soluble in benzene, volatile oils, carbon disulphide, solution of potash and ammonia, and glacial acetic acid, and very slightly soluble in petroleum ether, consisting of resin, starch, mucilage, and paraffine, organic acids, oxalic acids as CaC2C4 cellulose albuminoids, etc., which constituents of ginger are found to be odorless and tasteless.
The alcoholic solution is neutral in reaction and gives no precipitate with the acetates of lead nor with lime, and does not yield glucose when treated with diluted sulphuric acid. Strong sulphuric acid dissolves it with the production of a brown color; hydrochloric acid does not affect it. Nitric acid converts it into a blood-red resinous substance.
Adulterants of ginger are sago, tapioca, flour of rice, wheat, and potatoes, Cayenne and mustard hulls, and tumeric and exhausted ginger. The foreign starches, Cayenne, and mustard hulls are easily detected, but the tumeric (East India arrowroot) cells, from their resemblance to the resin globules of the ginger, are most confusing. For detection of exhausted ginger recourse must be had to proximate analysis.
Chemical composition of ginger:
Ash may vary from 3.4 to 8 per cent.; fiber, 1.7 to 9 per cent.
The white ginger has less ash than the dark, as is also the case in regard to the percentage of fiber.
| Water, | 11.00 to 9.10 |
| Ash, | 7.02 to 3.39 |
| Volatile Oil, | 2.54 to .96 |
| Fixed Oil, | 4.58 to 2.29 |
| Starch, | 53.33 to 46.16 |
| Crude Fiber, | 7.65 to 1.70 |
| Albuminoids, | 10.85 to 5.25 |
It is said that the water and starch extract from the weight of the newly dug root 75 to 85 per cent., and yet the dried root retains all the valuable aromatic qualities.
NUTMEG. (Myristica)
1 Nutmeg with Mace and part inner shell
2 Brown Pedang
3 Long Macassar with Mace
4 Singapore or Batavia
5 Flowering twig with leaf
6 Burr just opening showing the Mace
CHAPTER XII
NUTMEGS
Though all your parts we rashly grate
To particles most fine,
You yet return for cruel strokes,
Tears filled with perfume fine.
NUTMEGS are the fruit of Myristica fragrans (natural order Myristicaceoe) maschata officinalis. Myristica is founded upon the Greek word myrrh, myristikas, sweet smelling, and belongs to the custard family.
Italian, Nace moscada; French, Muscades et macis or Naix muscade; Portuguese, Noiz mascada; German, Muskatnusse and Muskatbluther.
The nutmeg was known by the Persians (as jouzbewa) and by the Arabians (jowzalteib) in the eighth century. There are about forty different species. Although the name myristikas (sweet smelling) was given to the genus on account of the odor of its fruit, there is a material difference in the several species, the commercial value of the fruit depending upon the degree in which the essential oil producing this perfume is present.
The true nutmeg is the kernel, mostly consisting of the albumen of the fruit or the seed of a diœcious evergreen tree, which in some countries, as in New Guinea, grows from fifty to sixty feet high. It is a native of the Molucca Islands. The nutmeg gardens of the world are the Banda Islands belonging to the East Indies, but the nutmeg is also found in the West Indies on the Island of Jamaica, which is quite noted for its nutmeg plantations. Nutmegs are also found in Bengal, Singapore, Penang, and French Guinea and Brazil, in the west peninsula of New Guinea, Damma, Amboina, Ceram, Boro, Boero or Bouro, Gilolo, Sumatra, and they have been successfully introduced in Ternate, Menando, in the Celebes group, and in Java and Bourbon or Reunion, but not in the Philippines. They do not do well except between 12 degrees north and 5 degrees south of the equator. They are found growing wild in the Banda Islands, to which they are indigenous. Three of these islands are noted for their nutmeg gardens, viz.: Great Banda or Lantor (Lantor Banda), Pulo Nera, and Goenong Api. The three islands together contain thirty-four parks, of which Great Banda has twenty-five, Goenong Api six, and Pulo Nera three.
These parks contain 319,804 bearing trees, which produce annually about 4,000 piculs of 139½ pounds each of nutmegs, and 1,000 pounds of mace. This yield gives about one and one-half catties of 139 pounds each of spice to each tree per annum. But much of the fruit is lost on account of the height of the trees, and the inaccessible places in which many of the nuts fall. Many drop into the streams and float away, and many are lost by being worm-eaten, also many are eaten by field rats. The entire group of Banda Islands is comprised within a space seven miles long and three miles wide; in fact, these are the dimensions of the Island of Lantor itself. The islands are of a light volcanic soil, and the great moisture, due to the numerous rains, makes them most favorable for nutmeg raising, and seems almost perfectly to suit the requirements of the tree. The only cultivation required is to keep the grass and weeds and underbrush cut, no manuring or artificial stimulus being needed. Almost the entire surface of the islands is planted with nutmeg trees. The labor is performed by Dutch convicts, who are banished to these islands, there being no native population.
Plants which spring up spontaneously from the seed are taken up and transplanted by simply heeling in the ground of the required vacancy. In some places clumps of trees are found growing not more than ten to twelve feet apart under the shade of the canarium commune. In fact, the nutmeg is more collected than cultivated in the Banda Islands. The trees grow from fifty to sixty feet high, while those of the Straits are but a shrub in comparison, and in other countries they grow only from twenty to forty feet high, and need much manuring and very careful cultivation. It would appear as if the trees were overshaded in the Straits, and yet they require much shade to protect them from the strong winds which prevail there.
When a nutmeg plantation is to be started, great care must be taken to select a good, rich, virgin soil, formed of a deep loam with good drainage, as the plants will not thrive on a sandy soil. The rainfall should be at least from sixty to seventy inches per annum. Although the nutmeg plant is essentially a lowland plant, flourishing from two hundred to four hundred feet above sea level, and not proving successful at a higher elevation than fifteen hundred feet, it must be kept free from stagnant water about its roots, for this would surely kill it. Virgin forest lands, with a soil covered with a layer of leaf mold or rotten wood, is well adapted to the cultivation of the plant, and a hot, moist climate is requisite. Plenty of shade is necessary to protect the trees from the prevailing winds which would scatter the flowers and uproot the trees, as the roots take but a slender hold in the ground. Large trees should not be allowed to grow with spice trees, as they would exclude the vivifying rays of the sun and arrest the fall of the night dews, which are necessary for quantity as well as quality of the nutmegs. Large trees would also rob the soil of its richness. A double row of cassuarina littorea and cerbera manghas planted at the windward side of the plantations will afford ample shade and protection from the winds, and trees with these advantages will give good crops.
Plants are raised from the largest, round, fresh nuts before they will rattle in the shell, care being taken that they are not more than two months old. They may be planted and staked in the field intended for the plantation, about eight feet apart. If they are kept well watered and manured, such planting is preferred to sowing in a nursery. Plants raised in a nursery are usually sown in bottomless baskets about one inch below the surface in a place well sheltered from the winds. The nurseries must be kept free from weeds and well watered every day in dry weather, especially when the seeds are planted in bamboo baskets, for should the earth become hard and dry the nuts will not germinate. If the land has been well tilled the seedlings will appear in about sixty days. When they are from three to four feet high they may be transplanted to a permanent situation. This should be done during wet weather and the trees must be kept well manured. They must be watered on alternate days and protected from the sun. They must be cultivated for five years. Care must be taken not to strike the roots of the tree in cultivating, for if the tap root is broken the tree is sure to die. When any roots become exposed they should be covered with leaf mold or with dirt mixed with cow manure. When well started, the trees should be thinned out, leaving them from twenty to thirty feet apart, according to the richness of the soil; the richer the soil the wider the space. Before the transplanting of the seedlings from the nursery, holes are first dug and left open for a time and filled with surface soil consisting of cow dung mixed with burnt earth, but if the ground is very rich the manure may be dispensed with. The holes prepared in this way give the young plants a good start. The trees are planted in prepared holes in the bamboo baskets as they are taken from the nursery, slit down at one side. Banana plants make good shade for young trees and return good profit until they have to be cut down to give room for the growing tree. When the trees are backward in growing they should have extra care. The soil about the roots should be loosened and manuring should be done with farmyard compost lightly scattered around the trees close to the stem, so that it may work its way into the soil. To dig holes would injure the roots and might cause the tree to die.
In very dry weather it is well to cover the ground around the trees with dry leaves to protect them from the sun’s rays and to keep the moisture in the ground. On poor soil the trees must be kept manured until they are fifteen years old. They need as many as ten large baskets to a tree. The manure should be at first spread in the sunshine to kill all the insects it may contain. All parasitic and epiphytic plants which may attach themselves to the stem and branches should be removed at once, as they would have a most injurious effect.
The pruning operations are very simple. All suckers should be cut away and the lower branches should be removed gradually until there is sufficient space for working under the trees. The nutmeg trees are monœcious as well as diœcious. The sex of a tree cannot be told until it flowers, which will be in about seven years, when, on cutting the flower open longitudinally with a sharp pen-knife, the sex may be determined. (See [illustration].)
The staminate flowers are from three to five, or sometimes more, on a peduncle, and the pistillate flowers are often solitary, both kinds of flowers being small and of a yellow color (without calyx), and the perianth is bell-shaped with three or four teeth at the top.
The anthers are set around a central column, and if the flowers be fully open the yellow pollen may be easily seen in the pistillate or female flowers, in the form of a little red disk knob. Soon after the fecundation of the embryo the female flower drops off and the little knob expands, gradually increasing in growth.
Fig. A, verticle section of male flowers.
Fig. B, verticle section of female flowers.
It will be noticed that the pistil is shorter than the perianth and is swollen at the base and crowned with the stigma which is indistinctly cut into lobes. It is a good plan to plant two nuts or transplant two seedlings in one hole about two feet apart, and when the flowers appear it will seldom happen that both trees will be male trees.
After determining the sexes the cutting out of the surplus male trees should take place. Those which are to remain should be left as much on the windward side of the plantation as possible, so that the pollen may be carried by the wind to the pistils of the female trees. In this respect the parks are similar to our apple orchards. If a surplus number of male trees be left growing, they are topped, or headed down and grafted with scions from the female tree.
The parkineers[[3]] on the Banda Islands do not expect a yield above 30 per cent. of male trees from the planted seed, and seldom so many, and they think 2 per cent. enough male trees to leave growing, while other countries look for a yield anywhere from 8 per cent. to 75 per cent. of male trees, and they estimate one male tree to eight or ten female the right proportion.
[3]. The parkineers is a term used in the Banda Islands.
The nutmeg tree is a handsome, bushy evergreen with straight and lofty undivided trunk, and with reddish-brown bark and verticillate branching head, much resembling our apple tree. It is cut back in the Straits to about twenty feet. The bark on the young branches is bright green, the dark, shining leaves, glossy on the upper surface and whitish below, are alternate, simple, and entire and oblong and obliptic and very aromatic. They are strongly veined, the petiolate being devoid of stipules or having very short foot stalks.
The nutmeg tree will begin to bear when from five to six years old and will then produce from five to six pounds of nutmegs and half a pound of mace to a tree. The yield is more profitable when the tree is ten years old. The tree will continue to produce fruit at sixty years of age, and has been known to bear a crop when one hundred years old. The male tree has a much shorter life than the fruit-bearing trees. The flowers are very small and are clustered in the axils of the leaves. They are a pale yellow and have a fragrance much like that of the lily of the valley.
The nuts will often split before reaching maturity, by reason of cold, damp weather and sudden changes. The nutmeg tree, like the orange, is a constant bearer, producing two crops in one year, and sometimes three, in the East. A much larger crop, however, is harvested in the later months of the year, and the smaller crops in April, May, and June, and even in July. Some are harvested every month of the year, as is the case to some extent on the Banda Islands, and they are delivered every month to the government boats. But the months especially devoted to harvesting are the same on the Banda Islands as in the Straits Settlement. From the Straits the shipments are made quarterly.
The nutmeg fruit is about three inches long and about two inches in diameter, and is found intermingled with the flowers of the tree, it requires from six to nine months to mature; fruits all the year around in a hot, moist climate. In the Banda Islands the fruit hangs upon longer and more slender stalks than is the case in the Straits Settlement. The fruit hangs pendulous from the tree and is fleshy and firm. At first it is round or oval and smooth, much like a damson plum, but it soon takes on the marked longitudinal, dented line and pale green color—characteristics that give it more the appearance of a peach or an apricot. It finally changes to a golden or yellow color and to the shape of a pear when ripe. This outer covering, which is at first thin, gradually grows fleshy, abounding in an astringent mass which becomes dry and leathery, at which time it bursts open into two valves from the apex, disclosing a brilliant scarlet aril or net-like membrane, revealing the nutmeg kernel, which is closely invested in a thin brown shell, which separates the kernel from the aril or mace which envelopes both.
In the early days the Dutch owned the Banda Islands. They attempted to control the nutmeg trade. Accordingly, they used to heat or lime the kernels before shipping, to keep them from sprouting and so to prevent the propagation of the trees. At one time they burned three piles of nutmegs, each as large as a church, to keep up the price. But Nature did not fancy this kind of business and a large pigeon, called the “nutmeg pigeon,” also known by the name of walor and nut eater (species of carpophoga), was attracted by the bright color of the mace and, feeding on it extensively, swallowing the mace and rejecting the nutmegs, accomplished what the Dutch tried to prevent, by planting the nuts in all the surrounding countries of Penang, China, Ceylon, and India. Thus the world at large was benefited.
HARVESTING NUTMEGS
The brown shell which covers the nutmeg has about one-fourth the weight of the nutmeg kernel. When the nutmegs are exported without removing the shell they keep better, but the cost of freight to the importers is increased.
The nutmeg fruit includes, first, the outer or fleshy membranous part; second, the substance covering the inner shell of the nutmeg, known as mace; next, the inner shell; and, finally, the kernel or nutmeg.
The native women and children gather the fruit twice each day, except Sundays, from under the trees and carry them into the boucan, barn, or sheds, made of brick with terraced roofs, rejecting the outer shell or husk. In the Straits Settlement, if the trees are not too high (the highest tree not being over thirty-five feet on Penang Island), the nuts are beaten off by means of long bamboo poles. In the Banda Islands the fruit is gathered by the use of a neat oval bamboo basket, partly open at the top, furnished with a couple of prongs. With these prongs the harvester catches the fruit stalk and by a gentle pull causes the nuts to fall into the basket, which will hold three or four. By using this method the mace will not be bruised as it would be by falling to the ground, and they have a skin more free from blemish, and it is thinner compared with the fruit and of a well-uniformed proportion.
The outer shell or husk, which is harder than that of a filbert, is removed by one man placing the nuts on a sort of a drum head and another beating them with a flat board, a process which will not bruise the nuts. One man will beat out as many in this way as six men can do in the way which is employed at the Straits. After the envelope of the curious, red-colored network (mace) is taken off the nutmegs are placed in receptacles which have fine wire-mesh bottoms, made of splints, called by the natives neebongs, to allow the air to pass through, or, by being elevated above each other, they are kept before a fire for a month or more, the first elevated being about ten feet from the ground. After this they are exposed to the sun two hours each day for two or three days until they rattle inside the shell when shaken. They cannot be removed when green without damage to the nut. They are then cracked by beating with great care, as hard blows would cause a black spot on the nuts, affecting the sale. They are then assorted into three grades, the finest are exported, the second are reserved for home consumption, and the third grade, made up of small, damaged, or unripe stock, are burned or used for nutmeg butter. Nutmegs are often affected by black spots or gangrene on the outer covering, caused by an insect, which deposits its larvæ on it in the husk and feeds on the saccharine matter of the outer covering until it bursts, when it makes its way into the soft nut itself.
The number one nutmegs are put up in half piculs (heavy-made boxes) containing sixty to sixty-five pounds. The ovate nutmeg seed is marked with impressions like the lobes or arillus (mace) which covers it, one side being of a paler hue and slightly flattened, and having the shape of the outer shell, with corresponding dimensions in size, the largest being about one inch long by eight-tenths of an inch broad. Four such nuts will weigh one ounce. They are of a grayish or brown color, but they are coarsely furrowed and longitudinally veined, and are marked on the flatter side with a shallow groove.
There are only three kinds of nutmegs generally known to the trade. The darker brown, which is the fruit of the myristica fragrans, is cultivated in Penang and is known as the Penang nutmeg. It is exported from the city of Penang (Betel-nut City, [Fig. 2]). The pale-brown, lined, Singapore or Batavian ([Fig. 4]), is named from the city of Batavia, on the Island of Java, from which this variety is exported. The long, slender, wild nutmegs ([Fig. 3]) are known as Macassars, from the city of Macassar (called by the natives Mangkasara) on the Island of Celebes, the principal city of export. But the three kinds are distinguished by the planters as male or barren; second, the round female (nux myristica fœmina or green) (nux maschata fructo rotundo), and the royal.
The royal nutmeg is no larger than a peanut (nux maschata rigia) and produces the long nut which has the aril or mace much longer than the nut, while the true queen or female, which is the more valuable round nutmeg, has its mace extending only half way down the nut.
The average yield at six or seven years, at which time the trees begin to bear, is five to six pounds, and a ten-year-old tree will produce from ten to fifteen pounds, and will cover an area of about five hundred square feet. This yield, at forty cents per pound, including the mace, would bring $300 per acre, besides the other ingredients yielded, which are valuable. The older the tree the greater the yield, and, of course, the tree is valued accordingly. There is a tree on the Island of Jamaica which bears over 4,000 nutmegs every year.
Nutmegs vary greatly in size, running from 60’s to 120’s as follows: large, 60’s to 80’s to the pound; medium, 85’s to 95’s; small, 100’s to 130’s. There are probably more of the 110 size used than of all other sizes combined. Nutmegs are assorted into the several sizes found on the market by passing them over different mesh sieves. This process is called garbling.
The Penang nutmeg, the fruit of the myristica fragrans, called by the Hindustanee and Bengalee jaiphal, or true nutmeg, as its name implies, which is the finest, is of a brown color and shaped like a damson plum. It is furrowed on the interior and grayish inside, with veins of red running through it, and possesses a fine, delicate aroma of great strength and flavor. The Penang nutmegs are not to be found in the spice-mill stock because the poorer Batavia or the wild Macassars will grind better, their worm holes will not show in the meal, and they are not difficult to powder. Liming nutmegs by the Dutch to prevent their sprouting has lead to misunderstanding and many vices. Some think limed nutmegs the best, taking them in preference to the fine, brown Penang, and are willing to pay higher prices for them. Such buyers seem to know nothing about the convincing, easy tests that may be made by weighing, the pure nutmegs being heavier on account of the oil they contain, and by scraping the nut with the finger nail to note if the oil starts.
Although there are only four kinds of nutmegs known to the trade there are more than twenty-five (many give as many as forty) different varieties. Those known to commerce, when found in the order of their quality, are as follows: The Penang, of which there were exported in 1904, 2,828 piculs, valued at $175,592, which are unlimed and are brown; second, Dutch limed or Batavians; third, Singapore, which are a rougher, unlimed, narrower kind, and of somewhat less value than the Dutch Batavia; fourth,[[4]] “long” or “wild” or “male nutmeg,” nux myristicamas, Clusius (nux maschata fructo oblongo C. bouchin), which is the product of myristica fatua. In addition to these, we have the Malabar, found in the district of Malabar, province of Madras, British India, which is the product of myristica Malabarica. It resembles a date in size and shape, and is closely allied to the long nutmeg, but has less flavor. It is called by the Hindustanee and Bengalee jaiphal, and those of myristica Malabarica, “ran jaiphal,” and “ramphal,” and in the native Malabar dialect, “panam palka,” and is largely used as an adulterant for powdered true nutmeg.
[4]. J. C. Sawyer’s Odorographia, Second Series.
HARBOR OF MACASSAR, CELEBES ISLANDS
A FOREST
The wild nutmeg (myristica argentea) tree grows very high with a leaf equal in size to the horse chestnut, with a silvery top, and in Germany it is called the “horse nutmeg.” It is found in New Guinea, Amboina, and the Banda Islands. The nuts, when fresh from the trees, are about four and one-half centimeters to six and one-half centimeters in length, and four and one-half centimeters to five and one-half centimeters in diameter. They are first of a bright red, but later scattered yellow-brown veins or specks appear which contain the aroma. After the husk is removed, the nut is about three and one-half to four and one-half centimeters long and from two to two and one-half centimeters in diameter, and the testa is nearly one millimeter thick. They abound in a disagreeable oil, which, of course, will rob them of the pleasant nutmeg flavor which is found in the cultivated nut. The thick pericarp or outer covering is hard and brittle. The mace which covered it is insipid, is of a reddish color, has a disagreeable odor and it generally consists of four stripes which are united above and below. It is broadest at the base, gradually narrowing toward the end. The fruit is elongated, or ellipsoidal, rusty, tomentose, in shape like a date, and differs from the true nutmeg in being less marked by the arillus furrows. The cotyledons are joined in a disc swelled at its edges to five millimeters diameter, and the endosperm contains much starch.
Myristica argentea nutmegs are sometimes used medicinally for dysentery, headache, and other ailments, and those long nutmegs (male), wild myristica tomentosa (myristica fatua), are next in flavor to the true myristica fragrans, and are the kind sold in the market as Macassars. Another kind scarcely worthy of mention is the myristica succedanea, a variety found on the Island of Tidor, which is very similar to the myristica fragrans. Other so-called nuts which rarely figure in our market except as a substitute to adulterate are the American, Jamaicans, or Calabash (monodora myristica), Brazilian (cryptocarya maschata), Californian or stinking (torreya myristica), Madagascar or clove (agathophyllum aromaticum), Peruvian (laurelia semperviren), Plume (atherosperma maschata), Sante Fe (myristica otoba) of New Granada and the myristica sebifera virola sebifera aublet, the seed of which furnishes an abundance of aromatic yellow tallow which has a crystalline appearance and is suitable to manufacture into candles. All of these varieties are not much better than the wooden nutmegs from the Nutmeg State, or the one made by the heathen Chinese out of sawdust and clay.
Batavia nutmegs are often attacked by beetles or are worm eaten. In this case they are pickled in lime water made from calcined shell-fish and mixed with water until it is of a semi-fluid consistency. Into this mixture they plunge the nutmegs (which have been put in bamboo baskets) two or three times until they are completely covered with it. Next they are put in heaps and are allowed to sweat. After this they are packed in boxes or barrels made of the best Java teak for exportation, with the worm holes plugged up. Sometimes it is thought quite necessary to lime the Batavia nuts (the kind most commonly used) before shipping, not only to protect them from the ravages of the beetles or worms which attack them, but also to prevent germination. But it has been proven that this process is perfectly unnecessary, as a simple exposure of the nuts to the action of the sun is sufficient to destroy the vitality of the embryo. It is also proven to be unnecessary, since the true brown Penang is shipped without liming. If lime is used, however, it should be in a dry state. After all that has been said, it is evident that the dealer or the consumer must be either foolish or ignorant who will reject the fancy, round, brown Penang nutmegs for the limed Batavia because it pleases the eye, and will for no other reason buy old worm-eaten nuts with plugged-up holes, relimed to give them a new appearance. The new coat of lime costs but little, but when the case is empty there is found from one to two pounds of lime in the bottom, not covered by tare, which has cost the purchaser the price of good nutmegs. Just so long as the trade will demand this class of stock, just so long will deception be practiced and inferior stock will be found on the market.
All nutmegs have a market value and must be sold. In selecting stock, pick out of a lot the most inferior looking nut and cut it into two parts. If it cuts firm like wood and has plenty of oil and no worm holes, there is not apt to be any danger of inferior nuts in the balance of the stock.
In using nutmegs always grate from the flower end instead of the stem end.
Good, fresh nutmegs cannot be ground by an ordinary burr stone, such as is used in spice mills, but must first be broken or cracked in a cracking machine. This machine consists of a roller provided with coarse teeth which revolve through similar stationary teeth, the material being retained by a semi-circular perforated plate until it is reduced to the size of the perforation or about the size of a coffee bean. After this it is pulverized by pounding or by stamps, as they are called, in the same way that mustard seed is pulverized. Sometimes the nuts are extensively mixed with some dry, foreign material, in which case they may be ground on the burr stone by an experienced miller. One or two stamps may be used in powdering nutmegs and mace, two being about all one man can well handle. Powdered nutmegs soon lose their flavor by standing, on account of the loss of oil, but as they have the consistency of tallow, the flavor is for a time preserved.
Nutmeg butter or balsam of nutmeg is often obtained by powdering the broken nuts, when fresh, to a fine powder or paste, and then steaming them for five or six hours. The substance is then put into bags, placed between heated iron wedges or plates and is subjected to a strong pressure, which presses out the fluid (though this is sometimes extracted by ether or alcohol), which is about 20 to 25 per cent. of the mass. Ten to 12 per cent. of this fluid is an orange-colored oil, which gives it an agreeable odor. When it is cold it becomes somewhat spongy and has a marbled or mottled appearance. It becomes hard with age and is exported in small bricks, ten inches by two and one-half inches, wrapped in palm leaves. It is known under several names, as nutmeg butter, balsam of nutmeg, concrete oil, or the mace oil of commerce (French, beurre de mascade; German, masket butter, muskatnussal), and as Banda soap, sometimes made from the distilled nutmeg leaves. It has an agreeable odor and a greasy taste, melts at 45 degrees C., and dissolves in four times its volume of warm alcohol, 8 per cent. pure, or in two parts warm ether. The Banda soap is soft to the touch, has a yellow color, and is sometimes counterfeited by using a foreign fatty substance, as palm oil, suet, wax, and animal fat, boiled with powdered nutmeg and flavored with sassafras, which gives it the right color and flavor. The best nutmeg oil is imported from India, often adulterated by the distillation of the leaves of the eucalyptus alba, which has a nutmeg odor and flavor. The fleshy part of the nutmeg fruit is often preserved in sugar and eaten as sweetmeats.
London’s annual import of nutmegs is 400,000 to 800,000 pounds, and of mace from 60,000 to 80,000 pounds. An amusing incident is told of an English governor sent to the Isle of Ceylon who, noting the statistics that nutmegs were very abundant and cheap, and mace was scarce and high, called his council together and said: “We must raise less nutmegs and more mace.”
The tissue of the seed can be cut with equal facility in any direction. By the microscopic study of a transverse section of a cut nutmeg we find the testa consists mainly of long, thin, radially arranged, rigid cells, which are closely interlaced and do not exhibit any distinct cavities. The endopleora, which forms the adhering coat of the kernel and penetrates into it, consists of soft-walled, red-brown tissue, with small scattered bundles of vessels, thereby imparting the peculiar marbled appearance so familiar in a cut nutmeg. In the outer layer the endopleora exhibits small collapsed cells, but the tissue which fills the folds that dip into the interior consists of much larger cells. The tissue of the albumen is formed of soft-walled parenchyma which is densely filled with conspicuous starch grains and with fat partly crystallized. Among the prismatic crystals of fat, large, thick, rhombic or six-sided tables may often be observed. With these are associated grains of albuminoid matter, partly crystallized.
In carefully made preparations from the whole nutmeg, the structure above described may be made out by care and patience, but in the ground only the interior parenchyma cells with their starch contents can be seen when mounted in water, with the alternate use of common and polarized light. The fatty crystals are not observed and the fragments of the endopleora, or red-brown tissue, are only detected by their colors.
In chloral-hydrate the starch cells and grains are swollen, but the red-brown tissue is much more transparent, sufficiently so, in fact, to reveal any differences between it and any adulterant which might bear a resemblance. There are but few bundles of fibers to be found, and the structure as a whole will be found so simple that the addition of any foreign material can be readily detected.
The nutmeg owes its flavor and aroma to the oil it contains, which is soluble in alcohol and may be obtained by distillation of the pulverized nuts, the yield being from 8 to 10 per cent. The oil is straw colored, with a specific gravity of 0.093, consisting principally of a hydrocarbon, C10H16, boiling at 165 degrees C. This appears by research to be a mixture of at least two hydrocarbons—one a terpene, boiling at 163 degrees; the other, ordinary cymene, the cymene being extracted by treating the mixture of hydrocarbons with sulphuric acid, whereby the terpene becomes resinized and, on distillation with water, the cymene passes over unaltered; when purified, this was found to be identical with all the other known cymenes.
Oil of nutmegs also contains an oxygenated constituent, termed myristicol, whose assigned formula is C10H14O, boiling near 212 degrees. Examined by polarized light in a 200-millimeter tube, oil of nutmeg, distilled, was found to deviate the ray 15.3 degrees to the right, and oil of long nutmeg 28.7 degrees to the right. A more minute analysis might be given, but enough has been said to meet all requirements for distinguishing between the pure and the adulterated nutmegs. To add more might be confusing, and, since at present nutmegs are almost entirely sold whole and grated in the kitchen, attempts at adulteration have been very few.
Chemical composition of nutmegs:
| Water, | 6.08 |
| Ash, | 3.27 |
| Volatile Oil, | 2.84 |
| Fixed Oil or Fat, | 34.37 |
| Starch, etc., | 36.98 |
| Crude Fiber, | 11.30 |
| Albuminoids, | 5.16 |
| Nitrogen, | .83 |
CHAPTER XIII
MACE
With your colors shining bright,
You stopped the pigeons in their flight;
From Dutchmen’s fields they planted seed,
Which brought forth wealth in time of need.
ALTHOUGH nutmegs and mace are the fruit of the same tree, and although they have similar properties, they are yet so different in growth and flavor as to justify giving to them separate chapters.
The fleshy scarlet mantle or arillus which envelopes the nutmeg (illustration under [nutmeg]), or the coat between the outside pericarp and the seed of the nutmeg, is called mace (Latin, Macis; French, Macis; German, Maker). It is not a continuous coat, but a network which varies in amount in different localities, as well as on the several species of nuts, being from 0.25 per cent. in the Bandas to 10 per cent. in Jamaica. It would, therefore, require from ten to 400 pounds of nutmegs to produce one pound of mace.
Planchon says of this laciniate envelope that it is nothing more than an expansion of the exostome and, therefore, an arillode or false aril.
Mace is harvested at the same time as the nutmegs and sometimes it is removed from the nutmeg by scraping with a knife, but removing it by hand is considered the better way. This is done by commencing at the base of the nut, for the reason that there the interlacing or lining becomes more expanded and at the same time flattened. In this condition it is placed on mats or trays to dry in the sunshine. The modern drier, however, is now largely used and is preferable, even when the weather is clear for a sufficient time to cure the mace, as sunshine seems to absorb some of its substantial qualities. The modern drier also prevents it from drying too rapidly. Mace, in drying, is first crimson, then blood red, but in process of drying it loses this tinge, and after a few months, when properly cured, it is of a yellowish or golden-brown color, preferred by the dealers. It is then firmly packed in bags (called by the Germans in the Straits Settlements, sok kols). The Banda mace is usually packed in one-half piculs of sixty-five pounds and in barrels or casks containing about 280 pounds each, the pressure being about equal to the weight of the mace. When driers are not used and the weather is wet, mace is dried by being smoked, care being taken not to blacken it. Sometimes the base of the mace is cut off and it is dried in double layers—a process which many think has a tendency to keep worms from working into it, but this is not true, as it, instead, furnishes a place in which they can hide.
True mace is the product of the true nutmeg, which is round and covered with single and double blades of flat and somewhat irregular smooth slits. These are slightly flexible or brittle membrane of a golden-yellow color, and, in the odor and taste, analogous to the odor and taste of the nutmeg. They are rich in fixed and essential oils and in aroma. While each is a part of the same fruit, the nutmeg and mace are entirely different in outward appearance and are separated for commercial purposes, as well as for their separate uses.
The Penang mace is most esteemed because it is flaxy and spreads. Penang exported 1,143 piculs, valued at $105,032, in 1904. The Dutch or Batavian is more fleshy and cheaper. The Singapore is inferior to both the Penang and the Dutch, while the wild or false mace from the long nutmegs is dark red and has a coarse, strong flavor, which is very different from that of the true mace.
[[5]]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. The anatomical structure is also different, as may be seen by the aid of a microscope. When moistened with hydrochloric acid, the Bombay mace presents the marked peculiarity of assuming a greenish color. Bombay mace may be detected by boiling the suspected samples with alcohol and filtering through a white filter; if the mace is pure the filter is stained a faint yellow, but if Bombay mace is present the filter, especially the edge, is colored red. A rather more delicate test is to add “Goulard’s”[[6]] extract to the alcoholic filtrate; with pure mace only a white turbidity is occasioned, but when Bombay mace is present a red turbidity is obtained. The reaction given by tumeric is similar, but it may be distinguished from that of Bombay mace in the following manner: A strip of filter paper is saturated with the alcoholic solution, the excess of fluid removed, and the strips drawn through a cold, saturated solution of boric acid. When Bombay mace is present the paper remains unchanged, but in the presence of tumeric it turns orange brown. If a drop of potassium-hydrate solution is now placed on the strip of paper, it causes a blue ring if tumeric be present, and a red ring if the adulterant is Bombay mace.
[5]. Tamk Bedd, G. L., Sylv. t269; Rheede, Hort., M21, iv, t5.
[6]. Pharmacographia Indica.
The myristica argentea produces a dirty-brown colored mace, and the arillus generally consists of four broad stripes which are united above and below. In selecting mace care should be taken to select the orange-colored with a transparent-like appearance. When it has a tendency to crumble to dust it is considered of poor quality. Dull-looking parcels should be avoided, as such is never genuine mace, but is obtained from concrete virtue or expressed oil of bruised or broken nutmegs.
Although pure mace has a flavor quite similar to that of the nutmeg, it has a peculiarity of its own which most people prefer. It is extensively used for medicinal purposes.
Ground mace, which is powdered by stamps or by pounding, the same as nutmegs or mustard, loses its flavor very rapidly and when distilled yields a reddish, buttery oil, which can be obtained by process of distillation. This oil is strong and volatile and contains an oxygenated body, the properties of which have not been determined. This buttery oil, mixed with other substances, is known as nutmeg balsam. (See [nutmegs].)
The uniform, small-celled, angular parenchyma of mace contains numerous brown cells of large size and the inner parts contain thin, brown vascular bundles. The cells of the epidermis on either side are colorless, containing thick walls, longitudinally extended, and covered with a peculiar cuticle of broad, flat, ribbon-like cells as a continuous film which cannot be removed. The parenchyma also contains many small granules to which a red color is imparted by means of a solution of meracious nitrate and an orange hue by use of iodine. This result shows that they consist of albuminous matter without starch.
The chemical characteristics are so marked and the structure is so closely carried out that the adulteration of ground mace is very easily detected.
All the details of structure in the ground powder of mace are readily made out by chloral-hydrate preparation with the polarized light, as the brown vascular bundles, the ribbon-like and epidermal cells are all polarizing substances, while the large mass of granular parenchymous cells are not. The ribbon-like cells are particularly interesting in the varied forms they assume.