Mace vs. Allspice: Differences and Substitutes

Mace and allspice both bring warmth, but they pull in different directions: allspice toward cloves, mace toward nutmeg. They come from unrelated trees on opposite sides of the world. Mace is the lacy covering around the nutmeg seed, from the Banda Islands of Indonesia, and allspice is the dried berry of a tree from southern Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean. That clove note has a chemical basis: allspice’s oil is mostly eugenol, the compound that dominates cloves.¹ Mace’s oil is built around a different group of compounds.²

Side by side

	Mace	Allspice
Species	Myristica fragrans, the nutmeg tree	Pimenta dioica
Family and order	Myristicaceae, in the order Magnoliales, the same order as magnolias	Myrtaceae, in the order Myrtales
Native range	Maluku (Banda Islands)	Southern Mexico to Central America and the Caribbean
Part used	The aril: a bright red, net-like covering partly wrapped around the seed	The dried berry; berries turn from green to a dull reddish brown as they dry
Color as sold	Red when fresh, turning orange-yellow as it cures in the dark; the red pigment is lycopene³	Brown, peppercorn-like berries; Spanish explorers named them pimienta, pepper
Essential oil	4 to 17 percent of mace (FAO)²	About 4.5 percent for Jamaican allspice (Britannica)⁴
Main aroma compounds	Mace oil carries a higher share of aromatic ethers than nutmeg oil; elemicin led that fraction in Grenadian samples²	Eugenol, 50 to 80 percent of berry oil (PROSEA);¹ eugenol, methyl eugenol and myrcene are the main constituents across studies⁵
Flavor	Warm and nutmeg-like, lighter, with a peppery edge	Clove-forward warmth with cinnamon and nutmeg notes
Forms	Whole blades and ground; ground is more common	Whole berries and ground

The oil figures come from different studies and samples, and they measure different things, so you can’t rank one against the other.

Two different flavor families

Allspice tastes like a blend, but isn’t one. Allspice got its name because the dried berry tastes like a combination of cloves, cinnamon and nutmeg. It’s a single spice from one tree. The clove part has a chemical basis: eugenol is 50 to 80 percent of allspice berry oil in PROSEA’s figures.¹

Mace tastes like nutmeg, and sources disagree on how strongly. Mace and nutmeg come from the same fruit. In a study of Grenadian oils summarized by FAO, mace oil always had a higher share of aromatic ethers than nutmeg oil, and taste panels could tell the two oils apart.² How strong mace is compared with nutmeg is disputed. America’s Test Kitchen calls ground mace “a more pungent nutmeg.”⁶ The Spice House’s blog says mace is more piquant and a bit less sweet than nutmeg,⁷ while its ground-mace product page calls the flavor subtler and mellower.⁸ McCormick says nutmeg is slightly more intense.⁹ The full comparison is on mace vs. nutmeg.

Going by the chemistry above, allspice is the more clove-like of the two and mace the more nutmeg-like. That’s a read of the chemistry, not a tasting result.

How each is used

	Mace	Allspice
Savory	Sauces, pickles, and meat and fish dishes (Britannica); savory dishes, pickles and ketchups (PROSEA); seafood (FAO)	Jamaican jerk, where pimento (allspice) and fresh thyme are essential and the meat is traditionally smoked over pimento wood; whole berries in broths, gravies and pickling liquids
Sweet	Cakes, doughnuts and fruit pies (FAO)	Widely used in baking (Britannica); mincemeat pie and gingerbread (America’s Test Kitchen)
Blends	Counted among the spices commonly used in garam masala, whose recipes vary widely by region¹⁰	An ingredient in McCormick’s pumpkin pie spice and apple pie spice¹¹¹²
Technique	Whole blades can steep in a liquid and be removed	America’s Test Kitchen sometimes blooms ground allspice in butter before adding it to a dough or batter⁶

Can one stand in for the other?

Only partly. They share warmth but not flavor, so the dish will taste different either way.

Allspice in place of mace (Attributed): McCormick says allspice has a similar peppery sweetness but a much stronger flavor, and says to use half as much and add more as needed.⁹ Expect a clove note that mace doesn’t have. If you have nutmeg, it’s the closer match; see mace substitutes.

Mace in place of allspice (Method): Start with half the allspice amount and taste. Mace won’t give you allspice’s clove note, so a small pinch of ground cloves alongside it gets you closer (the same tip appears on allspice substitutes). In jerk, where allspice is essential,¹³ there’s no real substitute.

Buying and safety

Ground allspice is sometimes cut with clove stems and starchy fillers, according to PROSEA.¹ Whole berries are easy to check and grind yourself.
Mace carries the same aromatic ethers as nutmeg, in a higher share of its oil.² One of them, myristicin, is metabolized in the body to MMDA, a compound with hallucinogenic properties, according to the Tennessee Poison Center.¹⁴ The National Capital Poison Center advises keeping nutmeg and its relative mace out of children’s reach.¹⁵ Normal cooking amounts aren’t the concern; see too much nutmeg for the dose figures and their sources.

What isn’t known

Sources disagree on whether mace is milder or stronger than nutmeg, so we don’t call it either.
None of the sources we opened name mace in specific Indian dishes or chutneys, so we’ve left those uses out.

Sulistiarini, Pimenta dioica, PROSEA, via Pl@ntUse. uses.plantnet-project.org · Reference work ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴
Production, handling and processing of nutmeg and mace, Section VI: Composition and constituents, FAO. fao.org · Reference work ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵
Flach and Tjeenk Willink, Myristica fragrans, PROSEA, via Pl@ntUse. uses.plantnet-project.org · Reference work ↩
Allspice, Encyclopaedia Britannica. britannica.com · Reference work ↩
Andrade Avila, Cruz-Olivares and Pérez-Alonso, Antioxidant Effect and Medicinal Properties of Allspice Essential Oil, IntechOpen, 2022. intechopen.com · Peer-reviewed ↩
Getting to Know: Baking Spices, America’s Test Kitchen. americastestkitchen.com · Publication ↩ ↩²
Mace Spice Explained, The Spice House, 2024. thespicehouse.com · Merchant ↩
Mace, Ground, product page, The Spice House. thespicehouse.com · Merchant ↩
What is Mace: Uses, Substitutes and Recipes, McCormick, 2025. mccormick.com · Merchant ↩ ↩²
How to make garam masala, Great British Chefs. greatbritishchefs.com · Publication ↩
McCormick Pumpkin Pie Spice, product page, McCormick & Company. mccormick.com · Merchant ↩
McCormick Apple Pie Spice, product page, McCormick & Company. mccormick.com · Merchant ↩
Vaughn Stafford Gray, “A Brief History of Jamaican Jerk”, Smithsonian Magazine, 2020. smithsonianmag.com · Publication ↩
Nena Bowman, “Nutmeg, a Potentially Uninvited Holiday Guest?”, Tennessee Poison Center, 2020. vumc.org · Reference work ↩
Rose Ann Gould Soloway, “Kitchen surprises and cautions”, National Capital Poison Center. poison.org · Reference work ↩

Also drawn on

Myristica fragrans Houtt., Plants of the World Online, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. powo.science.kew.org
Magnolia grandiflora L., Plants of the World Online, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. powo.science.kew.org
Pimenta dioica (L.) Merr., Plants of the World Online, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. powo.science.kew.org
Production, handling and processing of nutmeg and mace and their culinary uses (G.B. Marcelle, 1995), Section I: The plant and the environment, FAO Regional Office for Latin America and the Caribbean. fao.org
Production, handling and processing of nutmeg and mace and their culinary uses, Section VII: Utilization of products, FAO. fao.org
Mace (Britannica Editors), Encyclopaedia Britannica. britannica.com

Mace vs. Allspice: Two Unrelated Warm Spices Compared