When the world went nuts over nutmeg

The resinous, warm and delicate aromatic note of nutmeg can accentuate any dish — sweet or savoury, write Anurag Mallick & Priya Ganapathy

Originating in Banda, a tiny volcanic 10-island cluster and one of the famous Spice Islands of the Moluccas in East Indonesia, the evergreen tree Myristica fragrans gives two of the most interesting spices used the world over — nutmeg and mace. The rich volcanic environment of the Banda Islands was the perfect habitat for the coveted Banda nut.

Nutmeg trees are finicky, growing only in warm, humid weather and fertile, well-drained soil that enjoys an annual rainfall of 150cm. The Malays believed nutmeg trees will not bear fruit unless they can hear the sea!

Akin to the ornamental Fabergé egg, the nutmeg is an objet d’art of the spice world. Held like a precious bead within a filigreed lacy crimson aril, the nutmeg is actually the seed or stone of a pulpy pale yellow fruit, while mace is the reddish seed covering or delicate dried peel. The word nutmeg derives from the Latin words nux (nut) and muscat (musky). An enigmatic spice, it has a warm, slightly sweet taste with a mild peppery heat and woody notes like cinnamon. Like saffron, mace colours the food. The fruit resembles an apricot or plum that bursts when fully ripened, releasing the seed. The seed is dried over two months until it rattles inside its shell, which is peeled.

Yet, the history of the bloodstained nut is far more grisly. Traded for thousands of years by land and sea long before the Christian era, its soaring prices made it a sought after commodity, sparking wars for monopoly over its lucrative trade. Records suggest that nutmeg was discovered as early as the 1st century AD. Roman chronicler Pliny the Elder mentions the existence of a tree that bore fruits with two flavours and Persian physician Ibn Sina referred to it as ‘Jansi Ban’ or Banda nut. The Romans used grated nutmeg as an incense sachet! After the Arabs, Persian and Chinese traders ferried spices by sea and along the Silk Route through the Dark and Middle Ages to Egypt, Greece, Rome and Venice, the avaricious Europeans set sail on their own to bypass them all.

Like clove and cinnamon, nutmeg and mace too played their role in the Spice Wars that led to European colonisation, slave trade, and the discovery of the New World. While it was the Portuguese who discovered the Spice Islands in 1512, the Dutch became the earliest Europeans to gain access and consolidate their hegemony. The Dutch East India Company (VoC) held sway for over two centuries and literally went nuts blocking out their rivals. From export bans of nutmeg trees to soaking shipments of nutmeg in lime to prevent germination anywhere abroad, to keeping island locations secret and enforcing capital punishment to anyone who tried to steal, plant or vend nutmegs.

To achieve absolute control over nutmeg production in the East Indies, in 1621, the VoC, under the cold-blooded gaze of Governor-General Jan Pieterszoon Coen roped in Japanese mercenaries to massacre all the local Orang Kaya (influential tribal chiefs and elders) who revolted against them. Impaling their bodies on bamboo spikes in public view as a warning, they killed all-island men above 15 years, whittling the population from 15,000 to 600. They enslaved several others, exiled women and children and even chopped down every nutmeg tree on Run Island to prevent the competing British from reclaiming this territory. The Anglo-Dutch wars raged for 60 years. Yet, it was the tiny nutmeg that clinched what was dubbed as ‘the real estate deal of the millennium’ by Ian Burnet, author of East Indies. Who’d imagine that a mere seed would bring warring historic superpowers like the Dutch and British to the table to make peace? By signing the Treaty of Breda in 1667 and the Treaty of Westminster in 1674, the Dutch relinquished New Amsterdam, their swampy island colony and fur trading centre Manhattan, New York (then called New Netherland) to the British, in exchange for a 3 km strip of Run Island (or Rhun) in the Banda chain. This former British colony was purported as the sole source of the best nutmeg in the world.

A tidy swap for a commodity that could be acquired for a song in Banda and marked up by a whopping 32,000 percent of its price in Europe, the Dutch thought! They even burnt down nutmeg warehouses in Amsterdam to make the exotic spice artificially expensive in England! Yet, fate ensured that Manhattan became the city of everyone’s dreams and Run Island ran out of fame. In 1769, Dutch trade supremacy was shattered when nutmeg and other spices were smuggled out of Indonesia by a sneaky French horticulturist Pierre Poivre who planted it in the French colony of Mauritius. The British caught on and cultivated it in Ceylon (Sri Lanka), Grenada, Penang, Singapore and their other colonies, leaving Run Island almost forgotten and as remote and inaccessible as it was almost four centuries earlier. Today, West Indies remains one of the main producers of nutmeg in the world and Grenada honours the nutmeg on its national flag. In Banda, an ancient war dance Cakalele chronicles the gory saga of colonial atrocities perpetrated in the name of nutmeg, to keep the memories of their murdered chiefs and forefathers alive. Some believe the five male dancers represent the Bandanese army that was reduced to five after the Dutch massacre. Their costume retraces the trade of nutmeg with a European headdress — bird of paradise on a copper helmet called kapsete — a relic of the Portuguese, textiles from India and the gold flower clenched between their lips — symbolic of silent suffering.

The competition was cut-throat as nations kept nutmeg prices astronomical for a quick profit. While the Dutch were brutal, other traders were equally unscrupulous. American merchants filled polished wooden replicas into nutmeg sacks before shipping them to England! Perhaps, these duplicitous practices in the nutmeg trade made it a slang. ‘To nutmeg someone’ is to deceive a person, enough to make the victim look foolish. In football, it’s the deft kick of the ball through an opponent’s legs and retrieved from the other side.

In India, nutmeg is called jaiphal while mace or javitri is used to flavour biryani, Mughlai fare and desserts like kheer. In Sulawesi (Indonesia) and Malaysia, the entire fleshy ripe fruit is harvested, halved, dusted with palm sugar, and sundried for a few days till it ferments lightly. This candied treat pala manis in Sulawesi (pala = nutmeg, manis = sweet) is like ginger candy and eaten as a snack. In the Banda islands, the legacy of nutmeg continues as a sprinkling of nutmeg in coffee, while the fruit is used to make candied sweets, soup, and syrupy jam. Besides its culinary uses for flavour, nutmeg was believed to be the answer to health problems ranging from gas to the bubonic plague in the 16th century; the latter being desperate reason enough to send ships in search of it. Nutmeg is also used in medicinal therapy to combat digestive problems, lower cholesterol and liver disease, sleep disorders, and dental care (in toothpaste). Nutmeg oil has anti-bacterial and anti-inflammatory properties aiding joint pain relief. The twin spices feature in cosmetics like face packs, body washes, hair, and skincare for their exfoliant, depigmentation, and hair growth properties. The fragrant flower is exported to Europe for use in cosmetics and preserving corpses.

(The authors are travel/food writers and culinary consultants “loosely based” in Bengaluru. They run a travel/media outfit customising solutions for the hospitality industry, have authored guides and coffee table books, set up an award-winning restaurant and feature as ‘Dude aur Deewani’ in a new food-based digital infotainment show. Follow their adventures on Instagram: @red_scarab or their Facebook page Red Scarab.)