Mace: The Aril of the Nutmeg Fruit, Its Flavor and Uses

Mace is nutmeg’s lighter sibling: the red, lacy covering wrapped around the seed of Myristica fragrans. The seed inside becomes nutmeg, so the two come off the same fruit and share a tree, a history and much of their chemistry. They’re still not the same spice. Mace tastes like a softer nutmeg with a brighter, faintly peppery edge, and in one study, taste panels could tell its oil apart from nutmeg oil from the same tree.¹ Below: how it’s graded and used, and what’s known about its safety.

At a glance

What mace is

When a ripe nutmeg fruit splits open, you see a bright red, lacy aril partly wrapped around the dark, shiny seed coat. The aril gets peeled off and dried as mace; the seed is dried and shelled for nutmeg. Put simply, mace is a spice made from the dried covering of nutmeg.

Mace changes color after harvest. PROSEA says it’s stored in the dark after drying so its color shifts from the original red to orange-yellow, and that the red pigment is lycopene, the same red colorant you find in tomatoes.²

Flavor and aroma

Mace has a warm taste. Think of a softer, lighter nutmeg with a brighter, faintly peppery edge. You may see mace described as tasting of citrus, cinnamon, mint and basil, but we couldn’t find a source for that.

How its oil differs from nutmeg’s

The chemistry behind the difference is better documented than the tasting notes:

These are ranges compiled from different samples, so don’t merge them into one figure. FAO’s text says fixed oils are virtually absent from mace, but one of its tables lists 20–30%. We go with the text and flag the mismatch.¹

In a study of nutmeg and mace oils from Grenada summarized by FAO, mace oil always had a higher share of aromatic ethers than nutmeg oil from the same tree. Elemicin was the main aromatic ether in both, and taste panels could tell the two oils apart. The authors linked the taste difference to those aromatic ethers, though that’s their suggestion, not something they showed.¹

The low fat has a practical upside: FAO notes that ground mace keeps better than ground nutmeg because it has so little fixed oil.⁴

Origin and history

Mace shares nutmeg’s history. The tree is native to Maluku, specifically the Banda Islands. The short version, sourced in full on the nutmeg page:

• The Portuguese reached Banda in 1512, and the Dutch drove them out early in the 17th century.
• In 1621 the Dutch East India Company, under Governor-General Jan Pieterszoon Coen, ordered the capture of the whole archipelago. A chapter in The Cambridge World History of Genocide describes the destruction of Bandanese civilization that followed, and says the Company then held a world monopoly on nutmeg and mace production.⁵
• Run, one of the nutmeg islands, had been English since 1616. The Company took it in 1621, and England ceded it to the Dutch in the Peace of Breda in 1667, in a settlement under which the Dutch gave up New Amsterdam.⁶
• PROSEA says the French broke the monopoly in 1772 and the British ended it in 1802.²
• Nutmeg reached St. Vincent by 1802 and Grenada, from Banda seed, in 1843.

A few claims about mace’s history get passed around without support. We couldn’t trace the statement that Pliny described the nutmeg as a nut with two flavors. The claim that the Banda Islands were the only source of nutmeg and mace until the mid-19th century is contradicted by the West Indian plantings from 1802 on.⁷ And Banda wasn’t “the first overseas British colony.” The record only supports that Run was an English colony from 1616 until the Dutch took it in 1621.⁶

How mace is used

Sources describe mace’s uses differently:

Outside the kitchen, FAO lists mace oil in perfumes, scented soaps, denture products and chewing gum, and notes that people chew mace to mask bad breath.⁴

Technique

Drop whole blades into a stock, a pickling liquid or a poaching syrup and fish them out before serving. Ground mace disappears into batters, sauces and potted meats. Its paler color is handy in light sauces where flecks of nutmeg would show. You’ll often hear that you should add mace late because long cooking turns it bitter, but we couldn’t find a source for that. See cooking with mace for more.

Buying and quality

Grenada’s export grades for mace, as FAO recorded them in 1995:⁹

Look for whole blades that are intact and evenly colored. PROSEA notes that seeds of several other Myristica species turn up as adulterants of nutmeg.² We didn’t find a comparable source on adulteration of mace itself.

Storage

According to FAO, ground mace keeps better than ground nutmeg because it has so little fixed oil.⁴ We didn’t find a published shelf-life figure for mace from a regulator or standards body. Store it the way you’d store nutmeg, tightly closed and away from heat and light. The sourced detail is on how to store nutmeg.

Safety

Mace carries the same aromatic ethers as nutmeg, in a higher share of its oil.¹ PROSEA attributes nutmeg’s hallucinogenic properties to safrole, myristicin and elemicin.² The National Capital Poison Center, which describes nutmeg intoxication from large amounts, advises keeping both nutmeg and its relative, mace, out of children’s reach.¹⁰ We didn’t find a poison-center dose figure for mace itself. The nutmeg figures, and the disagreement over them, are on too much nutmeg.

On contaminants, the EU’s aflatoxin limit for spices names nutmeg (Myristica fragrans) but not mace, and the general ochratoxin A limit for dried spices is 15 µg/kg.¹¹ The text we read doesn’t say whether EU authorities apply the nutmeg entry to mace.

Health claims

You’ll often read that mace has several times the vitamin A and vitamin C of nutmeg and treats nausea, diarrhea and toothache. We couldn’t check the nutrient figures against USDA data, and we found no regulator summary or systematic review backing the medicinal claims. We’re not claiming mace treats or prevents any condition.

Substitutes and comparisons

Nutmeg is the obvious stand-in, since it’s the same fruit. Sources disagree on how much. America’s Test Kitchen, from its own tests, says to use double the amount of nutmeg,¹² while McCormick says nutmeg is more potent. The substitutes page lays out both. See mace substitutes, and:

• Mace vs. nutmeg
• Mace vs. allspice
• Cooking with mace