A
Little Nutmeg With Your Junket Or Pear?
Nutmeg has
traditionally been associated with puddings in English food for hundreds of
years, so it’s not surprising to see it turning up in a traditional rhyme.
You’ll find the history of the nursery rhyme, together with a very considered
and in-depth discussion of its possible derivation and meaning, in the article
by “Up In Vermont”, in his Poem Shape website.
When my
sister suggested some time back that I could write something on herbs and spices
for the “What We Ate” blog, I panicked slightly. ’Cos what herbs and spices did we eat, in New Zealand in the
post-war years? Very few! She’s ten years younger than me, so she doesn’t remember
the nineteen-fifties. But I remember them only too well.
Three herbs and five spices very occasionally made their appearance, in
minute quantities, on our dinner table. The herbs were parsley, chives and
mint. The spices were ground white pepper, cinnamon, ginger, cloves and nutmeg.
Nutmeg can be first, since I’ve already
mentioned Mum using it on junket, in the previous article, “Junket or Curds and
Whey; With the Grubby Tale of Little Miss Muffet”.
Let It Be
Nutmeg
Nutmeg and
cloves were the only whole spices that Mum ever used. She always had a nutmeg,
or usually a piece of nutmeg, parsimoniously preserved to the last crumb. It
would be carefully grated, on the smallest section of her ageing three-cornered,
upright tin grater, onto the aforesaid junket, or sometimes bread-and-butter
custard. It might occasionally have got onto a baked rice pudding instead of
cinnamon, but I don’t recall that she used it for anything else. Which is why
one nutmeg lasted a long time in our house. As a consequence, sixty-odd years
on I still feel slightly guilty when I grate a goodly amount of the spice into
a curry!
I’ll give you
a handful of recipes and then I’ll tell you a little about the tragic history
of the European competition for nutmeg.
This is pretty
much verbatim Mum’s version of bread-and-butter custard, that she often made
for the family through the 1950s and well into the 1960s. It didn’t always have
the sultanas (she never did it with currants), and I prefer it without them:
Bread And Butter Pudding
(from the section “Milk
Puddings and Custards”)
Two thin slices bread and butter, one
tablespoon sugar, one pint milk, two eggs, one tablespoon currants or sultanas,
grated nutmeg or cinnamon.
Cut the buttered bread into squares and put
in a greased piedish. Sprinkle with sugar and currants. Beat the eggs well, add
the milk and pour over. Grate nutmeg over top, and bake in a slow oven till set
- 30 to 45 minutes. In an Electric Cooker bake at 425° [F], top off, bottom low
10 minutes, then off.
(Green
and Gold Cookery Book: Containing Many Good and Proved Recipes. 15th ed.
(rev.), Adelaide, R.M. Osborne, [1949?])
That’s as
exciting as it got. Many similar recipes were published for the busy and
provident housewife in the years before and after the Second World War: nutmeg
was one of the most commonly-used spices for puddings.
Nutmeg Transatlantic
Naturally English
settlers took their recipes and their spices with them wherever they went, and
so nutmeg pops up quite early in American recipes, too, as does the ubiquitous
apple, the commonest fruit in the English culinary tradition.
There are
countless recipes for apples with nutmeg. Here’s an American one for turnovers
(not “dumplings”) from 1914:
Baked Apple Dumplings
Take rich pie crust, roll thin as for pie and
cut into rounds as large as a tea plate.
Pare and slice fine, one small apple for each
dumpling.
Lay the apple on the crust, sprinkle on a
tiny bit of sugar and nutmeg, turn edges of crust over the apple and press
together.
Bake in a hot oven for twenty minutes. Serve
hot with cold sauce.
(Lydia Maria Gurney. The Things Mother Used To Make: A Collection of Old Time Recipes, Some
Nearly One Hundred Years Old and Never Published Before. New York, Frank A.
Arnold, 1914)
This method
of making apple “dumplings” as a dessert dish, actually versions of turnovers
in which the apples may be chopped or left whole, recurs in American cookery
books of this period: we find it again in “French Baked Apple Dumplings”, from 365 Foreign Dishes: A Foreign Dish for Every
Day in the Year (Philadelphia, G.W. Jacobs & Co., [1908]).
If you find quinces
irresistible and fancy trying them with nutmeg or its sister spice, mace, you
might like to have a go at this; also a contemporary American recipe. The entry
is under “Quinces”; I’ve called it “Quince Pudding”, the term which the author uses
in her description:
Quince Pudding
The quince tree is the clown of the orchard,
growing twisted and writhing, as though hating a straight line.
Notwithstanding, its fruit, and the uses thereof, set the hall mark of
housewifery. Especially in the matter of jelly-making and marmalade.
Further a quince pudding is in the nature of an experience—so few have ever
heard of it, so much fewer made or tasted it.
The
making requires very ripe quinces—begin by scrubbing them clean of fuzz, then
set them in a deep pan, cover, after adding a tablespoonful of water, and bake
slowly until very soft. Scrape out the pulp, throw away cores and skin.
To
a pint of pulp take four eggs, beat the yolks light with three cups of sugar
and a cup of creamed butter, add the quince pulp, a little mace broken small or
grated nutmeg, then half a cup of cream, and the egg-whites beaten stiff. Bake
in a deep pan, and serve hot with hard or wine sauce.
(Martha McCulloch-Williams. Dishes & Beverages of the Old South.
New York, McBride Nast & Company, 1913)
The knowledgeable
may discern a certain resemblance to the ancient English recipe “Chardquynce” (various
spellings). Like nutmeg, quince is a very old culinary ingredient in the English
tradition.
Rather More
Savoury
In very early
English recipes nutmeg and other sweet spices were used with meat or in other
savoury dishes, as they still are in many other cuisines today. But nutmeg only
subsisted in a few scattered savoury dishes in the Empire on which the sun
never set. You sometimes see it in traditional recipes for making sausages. Here’s
a cheap do-it-yourself Australian alternative for the provident housewife of the
late 19th century:
Potato Sausages
3 Cold Potatoes—1/2d. 1/4 lb. Cold Meat—1d.
Nutmeg, Pepper, and Salt; 1 Egg; Bread
Crumbs; Hot Fat—1 1/2d.
Total Cost—3d. Time—5 Minutes.
Mash up the potatoes, and mince the meat; mix
together, season nicely, and mix into a paste with half the egg. Roll into
sausages, egg and bread crumb, and fry in hot fat. Dish in a pyramid, and
garnish with fried parsley.
(Philip E. Muskett and Mrs H. Wicken. The Art of Living in Australia, by Philip E.
Muskett; Together With Three Hundred Australian Cookery Recipes and Accessory
Kitchen Information by Mrs. H. Wicken. London, Eyre and Spottiswoode,
[1894])
Later
Australian cooks would call these rissoles, not sausages. There is a very
similar recipe called “Rissoles” in the Green
and Gold Cookery Book, 15th ed. (rev.), circa 1949.
Savoury Again:
Nutmeg With Vegetable
If nutmeg crops up with a
vegetable in earlier recipes from the British tradition it’s usually with
spinach or, in the Antipodes, silverbeet. It’s good with either the tops or the
stalks of the latter. I’ve given my recipe for “Delicate Creamed Silverbeet
Stalks” in “Killing Vegetables:Silverbeet”. http://katywiddopsblog.blogspot.com/2018/06/
Later on we discovered nutmeg’s also lovely
with pumpkin. These days there are lots of recipes for pumpkin soup. I’ve had
it with cinnamon, but this New Zealand version from 1980 with nutmeg is more
unusual:
Pumpkin Soup
500 g peeled pumpkin; 1 medium-sized onion;
600 ml chicken stock; 1/2 teaspoon freshly-grated nutmeg;
1 tablespoon butter; salt and pepper to taste;
Boil the peeled, chopped pumpkin and the
sliced onion together in a minimum of water until tender.
Put through a blender or fine sieve.
Return to saucepan and add the butter,
seasoning [including nutmeg] and stock. Reheat.
The soup may be thickened with a little
cornflour mixed with water.
Serve sprinkled with chopped parsley. –Serves
4-6.
(Mary Browne, Helen Leach & Nancy
Tichborne. The Cook's Garden: For Cooks
Who Garden and Gardeners Who Cook. Wellington, [N.Z.], A.H. & A.W.
Reed, 1980)
Foreign and
Savoury: Over the Channel
The Europeans
went on using the old spice in savoury dishes more than the British did.
This
is an Italian dish: a slightly rewritten version of an Elizabeth David recipe.
I sometimes do a version using Philadelphia Lite cream cheese and skipping the
butter. You can also make it without the Parmesan, which is blander, but very
nice. Watch the nutmeg; you don’t want it to overpower the dish.
Pasta con la
Ricotta (Pasta with Ricotta)
300
g pasta; 175 g ricotta cheese;
60
g grated Parmesan; good pinch grated
nutmeg;
freshly
ground black pepper; 15 g butter;
Optional: pinch of salt
1. Cook the pasta according to the directions
on the packet. Drain well.
2. Mix the cream cheese by hand or in a
blender until smooth.
3. Add the grated Parmesan and season with a
salt (if desired), nutmeg and finely ground black pepper.
4. Put the cooked and drained pasta in a
warmed serving dish and stir the cheese mixture into it. Add the butter and
stir well.
5. Let the cheese melt a little, if necessary
putting the dish into a warm oven for a couple of minutes.
Serves 4.
(Elizabeth David. Italian Food. 2nd ed. (revised), London, Macdonald for the Cookery
Book Club, 1966)
This next is
also an Italian recipe. I’ve done it with a New Zealand red instead of Barolo;
it would also be good with an Australian Shiraz. It would be an ideal dish for
the slow cooker or crock-pot. I’d advise skipping the pork fat out of respect
for your arteries. Use some olive oil instead.
Manzo Stufato al Barolo (Beef in Barolo Wine)
(From Piedmont)
2 - 2 1/2 lbs lean beef [1 kg]; 3/4 pint Barolo [450 ml/2 cups];
1 bay leaf;
1 clove garlic; grated nutmeg;
1 medium onion; 4 tablespoons fresh pork fat;
2 tablespoons butter
Cut meat into 6 large pieces. Put into a bowl
with bay leaf, garlic, a little salt, pinch of pepper and pinch of grated
nutmeg. Add wine, stir and leave in a cool place, covered, for at least 8 hrs,
or overnight, turning the meat occasionally.
Dice onion and pork fat. Heat fat and butter
in large pan, and when hot sauté onion gently till soft but not brown.
Take meat from marinade, drain thoroughly and
dry. Add meat to pan and brown over a moderate heat. Strain the marinade and
pour over the meat. Check seasoning, cover pan and cook slowly for 2 hrs, or
till meat is very tender. –Serves 6.
(Ada Boni. Italian Regional Cooking. New York, Dutton, 1969)
A few more
recipes later; but first, some of the sad history of nutmeg for you:
With another hat on, I have written a lot about
the history of the European discovery of nutmeg and the other spices of the
East, in “From Machu Picchu to Darkest Africa at RGSSA”, my blog about the Royal Geographical Society
of South Australia’s collection of books of travel and discovery, which
includes some important works from the 16th and 17th centuries: http://rgssamachupicchu.blogspot.com/
Nutmegs and
mace both come from the nutmeg tree (Myristica
fragrans). Nutmeg is the inner nut and mace is the dried membrane which
surrounds it, within the outer shell. Originally nutmeg trees grew only in the
tiny Banda Islands within the Moluccas (modern Maluku in Indonesia), in
particular on little Run Island or Pulau Run ("Poolaroone" in early
English texts). From these small scattered islands, cloves, nutmeg and mace
were traded all over the world centuries before Europeans reached the East
Indies.
Spices were worth a huge fortune in Europe
from the Middle Ages right through to the 17th century. They were used not only
to flavour food—rich Mediaeval households had their own “spicer” in the kitchen—but
also in medicines. The sort of person who kept a spicer in those days would be
the equivalent of the owner of a Beverly Hills mansion today. Initially the spices
were traded via India and then by devious
routes, often overland, to the Middle East and thence Europe, especially
Venice.
The
Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama’s discovery of the sea route to India marked
the beginning of European expansionism in the East. Once the Dutchman, Linschoten,
had stolen the guides to the sea routes into the East Indies, the Portuguese “rutters”
(the modern word, if we used it, would be “routers”,) the floodgates were open.
Here is Linschoten's description of nutmeg
and mace:
And this
shows the ripening nutmeg fruit split open to show the mace (or “flowers”),
exactly as he describes it: “redde, as Scarlet, which is a verie faire sight to
behold”:
After
Linschoten, European explorers and traders (the two categories being indistinguishable
at the time) soon began to head East in quest of the immense fortunes that spices
would bring them. Some overloaded their ships to such an extent, not only
stuffing the hold with spices, but also piling the deck high with bags and
barrels of them, that the vessels foundered and sank on the way home.
The first part of the 17th century in the
East Indies was characterised by vicious battles and inhumane repression, centred
round the clove islands, especially Ambon (“Amboyna”) and the nutmeg islands,
the Bandas. The Portuguese, established in what is now Goa on the west coast of
India and making fortunes from pepper and cinnamon in particular, had a toehold
in the spice islands, but the Dutch, having formed the Dutch East India Company
(the VOC), drove them out by 1612. The English, with their East India Company,
also swiftly headed for the treasures of cloves, nutmeg and mace. The local
inhabitants would suffer for their greed.
In 1619 the VOC
appointed Jan Pieterszoon Coen, a man with a genius for organisation, as
Governor-General. He attacked the city of Jayakarta in Java, burned it to the ground,
expelled its population, and renamed it Batavia (modern Jakarta), establishing
it as the VOC’s headquarters in the East. Coen initiated a brutal and
repressive régime, driving out, starving or slaughtering almost the entire
population of the Banda Islands, in a push to establish Dutch plantations of
cloves and nutmegs, and gain a commercial monopoly.
The Dutch East India Company and the East
India Company fought over the Banda Islands throughout the first two decades of
the 17th century. A Dutch captain, Verhoeff, had built a fort on the island of
Banda Neira and forced the Bandanese to agree to a treaty, but it was almost
immediately broken. The Dutch did not pay well, the English were also pushing
for trade and offering higher payments, and in any case the Bandanese were
traditionally a fiercely independent people, unwilling to knuckle under to any
outside force.
Meanwhile the
English had built fortified trading posts on little Run
("Poolaroone," in the early texts, for Pulau Run) and on Ai, but
these were under intermittent Dutch attack. For four years Run, taken for the
English by Nathaniel Courthope (or “Courthop”, etc.) was under siege by the
Dutch, and in 1620, after his death in a Dutch attack, the English left Run.
In 1621 Coen enforced a Dutch monopoly over
the Banda Islands’ nutmegs & mace. The Bandanese were forced at gunpoint to
sign a treaty that was impossible to keep. Alleged violations of the treaty led
to a punitive massacre by the Dutch, as Coen had intended. At Coen’s orders the
Bandanese were well-nigh annihilated. The native population had been about
13,000 or 14,000. Only around 1,000 were left. The Dutch brought in slaves,
convicts and indentured labourers to work the nutmeg plantations. Surviving
Bandanese were sent to Batavia to work as slaves. About 500 Bandanese were
later returned to the islands because of their much-needed expertise in nutmeg
cultivation.
Perks for the Nutmeg Farmers
Coen divided
the productive land of approximately half a million nutmeg trees into
sixty-eight 1.2-hectare “perken,”
land parcels which were assigned to Dutch planters (perkeniers). 34 were on the island of Lontor (Lonthoir, or Banda
Besar), 31 on Pulau Ai and 3 on Banda Neira. The VOC paid the growers 1/122nd
of the Dutch market price for nutmeg—though it still gave them substantial
wealth.
The Fate of Little Run
Later in the
century, when the First Anglo-Dutch War was ended by the Treaty of Westminster
in 1654, the island of Run should have been returned to England. Attempts to
get the Dutch to return it failed. In 1665 all the English traders were
expelled from the little island. The VOC exterminated the island's nutmeg trees
as part of their effort to keep the nutmeg monopoly.
Some
accounts claim that, in a strange twist of fate, in 1667 under the Treaty of
Breda the English traded their rights to Run for Manhattan Island.
Nutmeg and the other spices of the East
Indies made the Dutch East India Company and the merchants and sea captains associated
with it unimaginably rich. But this wealth came at an immense and disgusting
cost in human lives and happiness. Maybe we need to remember this occasionally
as we buy a little packet of nutmegs at the supermarket for a ludicrously low
price.
Read more about the race for nutmeg and
other spices at:
“Discovering
Asia: The Stolen East Indian ‘Rutters’: How the Dutch Broke the Portuguese
Trade Monopoly”:
“Discovering
Asia: The Dutch Race to the Spice Islands”:
“Discovering
Asia: The East Indies Opened Up To Colonial Expansion”:
“Discovering
Asia: East Indies - Companies and Conflict”:
Flourishing in the East, But Spreading Westward
Two charming contemporary
illustrations from opposite sides of the globe show us that the strangeness of
the spice plant Myristica fragrans remained
a source of interest to Europeans into the first decades of the 19th century. In
spite of battles and commercial piracy nutmeg was still flourishing in the East
Indies, as we can see from the delightful illustration from the William
Farquhar Collection of Natural History Drawings, now in the National Museum of
Singapore. The collection consists of 477 watercolours of plants and
animals of Malacca and Singapore by unknown Chinese artists that were
commissioned between 1819 and 1823 by William Farquhar (1774-1839).
Monopolies in horticultural produce are
difficult to maintain, and so it proved with nutmeg, mace and cloves from the
Banda Islands. Already in the early 19th century nutmeg trees were raised in
the West Indies, as illustrated in Flore
pittoresque et médicale des Antilles, by Descourtilz, père et fils:
And in 1861 Mrs Beeton notes: “NUTMEG.—This
is a native of the Moluccas, and was long kept from being spread in other
places by the monopolizing spirit of the Dutch, who endeavoured to keep it
wholly to themselves by eradicating it from every other island. … The plant,
through the enterprise of the British, has now found its way into Penang and
Bencooleu, where it flourishes and produces well. It has also been tried to be
naturalized in the West Indies, and it bears fruit all the year round.”
Today Indonesia has a world market share of
75% of the nutmeg trade, but Grenada, in the West Indies, not the East, has 20%
(Wikipedia). Nutmeg is so important a crop there that it features on the national
flag of Grenada. That’s it, on the left of the flag:
On a more cheerful note, here are a few
more recipes. The first is from Grenada; the source gives it with a recipe for
jerk spiced pork (very hot) but you could just serve it with grilled or
barbecued pork chops.
Sweet Potato Salad
4 sweet potatoes,
halved; 4 thyme sprigs;
1/4 red onion,
chopped; 1 large tomato, chopped;
small bunch of
coriander, roughly chopped; 1 lime;
small bunch of
parsley, roughly chopped;
nutmeg, grated to
taste; salt & freshly ground black
pepper.
The peeled sweet
potatoes may be baked in foil in the oven with sprigs of thyme, or just boiled,
steamed, or microwaved.
To make the salad,
remove the potatoes from the foil and discard the thyme. Roughly chop up the
potatoes and add good pinch of salt and pepper. Stir in the chopped onion,
tomato and herbs and squeeze in the lime. Add a good grating of nutmeg.
Serve with pork
chops, and a wedge of lime on each plate. –Serves 4
(“Jerk Spiced Pork
with Sweet Potato Salad”, www.channel4.com/spice trip)
Silver Nutmeg and Golden Pear
I haven’t forgotten
about the pears! Many spices go well with them; I find that using just one
tends to enhance the flavour of the pear better than using several. But in this
adaptation of a Mediaeval recipe, nutmeg is used along with several other
spices, as it was back then:
Chardwardon with St. Swithin's
Creme
8-10 firm, ripe
pears; 1 lemon, room temperature;
3/4 cup sugar; 1/4 tsp. cinnamon; 1/4 tsp. nutmeg;
3/4 tsp. ginger; 1 cup water; 1/8 tsp. salt;
2 cups whipping
cream; 10 yellow dandelion flowers;
black bread; sharp cheddar cheese, diced
Core and dice 8-10
pears. Some people only quarter them the long way, core and peel them, and
briefly cook them so the pear retains it shape. My wife and I prefer to cook
them right down to pear chutney. Add
pears, water, salt, sugar and spices to a pot and slowly simmer down to sauce.
Halve the lemon,
squeeze the juice into the pot and put the lemon rind aside. Whip the cream
until it peaks.
In each of four
bowls, put one slice of black bread and a handful of chunks of cheese. Dish the
pear sauce over the cheese and top with whipped cream.
Grate lemon peel
onto the whipped cream and serve immediately.
Serves 4.
By Dagonell; Dagonell
notes: Traditionally, this dish should be served on St. Swithin's Day, July
15th. –Lemon peel on whipped cream? Yes. It's divine the first hour, merely
exquisite the second, and must be pitched afterward. If you actually do serve
this dish on St. Swithin’s Day, it's traditionally served with a sprinkle of
dandelion petals.
“Wardon” or “warden” is an old word for
pear, and the “chard” was originally French, char de, “flesh of”. You could translate the word “chardwardon” as
“pear purée”; but there is considerable controversy over what consistency the
dish and its sister dish, Chardquynce, actually had, some maintaining that it
should be relatively sloppy, as it is here, others that the water should be
drained from the cooked fruit and it should be cooked down to a stiffish paste.
Here’s an authentic old version:
Charwarden
To mak chard
wardene tak wardens and bak them in an oven then tak them out and paire them and
grind them in a mortair and streyne them smothe throwghe a streyner then put
them in an erthene pot and put ther to sugur till they be douced as ye think
best and put ther to pouder of notmeggs guinger and granes and let the pouder
be farcede put ther to powder of sanders tille it be coloured and stirr it with
a pot stik and set yt on a soft fyere and let it boile till yt be stiff as
leche lombard and ye put amydon or rise it is bettere and when it is cold lay
it fair abrod in the coffyn and let it stond ij dais and ye liste strawe
senymom upon it …
(A noble boke off cookry ffor a prynce
houssolde or eny other estately houssolde: reprinted verbatim from a rare ms.
in the Holkham collection, edited by Mrs Alexander Napier. London, Elliot
Stock, 1882)
granes = grains of
Paradise (Melegueta pepper);
sanders = red
sandalwood (Pterocarpus santolinus);
leche Lombard =
Lombard slice (a meat loaf);
pare = pare
(peel); streyne = strain; smothe = smooth;
douced =
sweetened; amydon = amidon (wheat
starch);
rise = rice; coffyn = pie crust; ij dais = 2 days;
liste = list
(like); strawe = strew; senymon = cinnamon
As you can
see, it’s definitely the stiff paste version. Its nearest relative today would
be the stiff quince paste (membrillo)
that the Spaniards still make from quinces. Making dishes such as these, which
I think may derive from the halva of
the Middle East and the halwa of India,
does take a long time—and a lot of heavy stirring by hand!
So you could just stew your pears with some
sugar and add a grating of nutmeg.
