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