Cinnamon vs. Nutmeg: Bark vs. Seed, and How to Swap Them

Cinnamon and nutmeg sit side by side in pumpkin pie spice, but they come from unrelated trees, and from different parts of them. Cinnamon is the dried inner bark of Cinnamomum trees in the laurel family; nutmeg is the dried seed kernel of Myristica fragrans, in the nutmeg family. The big practical difference is strength: two spice merchants both say to use a quarter as much nutmeg as the cinnamon called for.¹² Their smells come from different compounds, too, with cinnamon bark oil mostly cinnamaldehyde and nutmeg’s oil led by pinenes and sabinene.³⁴

Side by side

The compound figures come from different sources and different spices. They show what leads each aroma, not how strong one spice is next to the other. For the individual spices, see cinnamon and nutmeg.

Bark and seed

Cinnamon is the inner bark of the tree. For Ceylon cinnamon, PROSEA describes commercial bark no more than 0.5 cm thick, with smaller curled pieces slid inside longer ones to build the familiar compound quills.³ Cassia is a group of related species, and it’s the type you’ll most often find in North America; the NIH calls Ceylon the “true” cinnamon.¹² For how the two cinnamons differ, see Ceylon vs. cassia cinnamon.

Nutmeg comes from a fruit. The spice traded as nutmeg is only the dried seed kernel, and one fruit gives you two separate spices: the kernel is nutmeg, and the lacy aril around the seed is dried as mace. See mace vs. nutmeg.

What each aroma is made of

Cinnamon gets its character from cinnamaldehyde, which dominates the bark oil of every type. Ceylon bark oil also has a real share of eugenol, the clove compound, while Chinese cassia oil has only traces.³⁵

Nutmeg’s volatile oil makes up 5 to 15% of the kernel, and FAO names α-pinene, β-pinene and sabinene as its major components.⁴ The aromatic ethers, including myristicin, elemicin and safrole, make up 2 to 18% of the oil in PROSEA’s figures.⁶ They’re a small part of nutmeg’s aroma, but they matter for safety (below).

So these are two unrelated sets of compounds, and the two spices can share a dish without repeating each other.

How they work together

Plenty of spice blends and recipes use both. McCormick’s pumpkin pie spice lists cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg and allspice, in that order.¹³ Saveur’s Cincinnati chili uses cinnamon alongside nutmeg, allspice and cloves.¹⁴

Each one also has jobs of its own. In Europe, cinnamon goes mostly into baked goods and sweets, hot drinks, herbal infusions and mulled wine, and it’s a key ingredient in Indian preparations like garam masala and masala chai. Nutmeg leans toward dairy and savory dishes: eggnog, ice cream and milk pudding, and, as McCormick suggests, scalloped potatoes, glazed carrots and creamed spinach. A pinch of nutmeg also goes into white sauces and cheese sauces, where cinnamon would be out of place.

Safety: different concerns

Cinnamon: coumarin, and lead in some ground cinnamon. Cassia can carry a lot of coumarin. BfR puts the average in cassia in German monitoring at about 3 g per kg, and calculates that a 60 kg adult reaches the tolerable daily intake with about 2 g of cassia a day, a 15 kg child with about 0.5 g.⁷ That intake, 0.1 mg of coumarin per kg of body weight a day, is EFSA’s.¹⁵ Separately, a US FDA public health alert on ground cinnamon lists specific products found to contain elevated lead, with results it reports from 2.03 to 7.68 parts per million.⁸ Those are particular products, not cinnamon in general; the cinnamon profile has the details.

Nutmeg: dose, and aflatoxin. Nutmeg is safe in cooking amounts. The National Capital Poison Center says it isn’t dangerous when used as recommended.¹⁶ Eating a lot of it is another matter. The Tennessee Poison Center says the body converts myristicin to MMDA, a compound with hallucinogenic properties, and puts the dose at which psychogenic effects have been reported at 15 to 20 g, or two to three tablespoons of ground nutmeg.⁹ The Missouri Poison Center gives 5 to 30 g as the range people take to get high.¹⁰ Those two figures describe different things and don’t line up, but both are far beyond anything a recipe calls for. Nutmeg also has its own entry in the EU’s maximum levels for aflatoxins.¹¹ See too much nutmeg.

Can one stand in for the other?

In a blend or a background role, yes, in small amounts. The published ratios below are rules of thumb from merchants and a food writer, and none says how it was set.

These two figures don’t come from a single measure of strength. If nutmeg were four times as strong as cinnamon, as the first row implies, replacing nutmeg would take more cinnamon, not half as much. The Spice House gives both figures anyway. Treat each as a cautious starting point for its own direction, and taste.

When one spice is the point of the recipe, as in cinnamon rolls or a nutmeg-scented custard, the swap will change the dish. A blend that has the missing spice is usually the better fix. See cinnamon substitutes and nutmeg substitutes, where mace ranks first for nutmeg.

What isn’t known

• The swap ratios are guidance from merchants and one writer.
• The compound figures come from different reviews and different spices, so they don’t measure relative strength.
• We found no dated, sourced retail price comparison.
• You’ll sometimes read that Ceylon cinnamon is a better stand-in for nutmeg than cassia, or that nutmeg replaces Ceylon better than cassia. None of the sources we found tests either claim.

Related

• Cinnamon, Ceylon vs. cassia cinnamon, ground cinnamon vs. cinnamon sticks and too much cinnamon
• Nutmeg, cooking with nutmeg, fresh vs. ground nutmeg and mace vs. nutmeg
• Cloves vs. cinnamon, allspice vs. nutmeg and nutmeg vs. cloves
• Pumpkin pie spice