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: