Honoring Pierre Poivre and Nutmeg
A major Colorado resort came to me this week seeking a 7 or 8 pepper blend originally developed by a Frenchman named Pierre Poivre. My research led me to this blog post, which is a tremendous article on the spice trade, and I just have to share it with you: Pierre Poivre, 1719 – 1786: Nutmeg and Spice | A History Blog by Bruce Ware Allen.
A Bit About the Spice Trade
Bruce Ware Allen’s take on Pierre Poivre’s history is an excellent and humorous piece of writing. I laughed out loud when I got to this sentence:
“His widow Francoise Robin married his biographer and fellow Physiocrat Pierre Samuel du Pont, and together they moved to America where the family got involved in other enterprises.”
The spice trade has historically been a lucrative trade. It was the source of the Middle East’s economy up until oil was discovered and processed by the British. The excellent book, The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power by Daniel Yergin recounts the energy trade from dipping sticks in pitch and lighting them up to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1989.
A good friend of mine who had read The Prize said, “All you have to do is supplant the word spice for the word oil and you’d have a pretty good approximation of the spice trade.”
As a source of lucrative world trade and the geopolitics associated with international trade, this is true. It’s also evidence of what a good history degree can do to one’s psyche.
“Grenada in its region” by TUBS – Image licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons – http://goo.gl/GXdXs5
Pierre Poivre conspired and succeeded at stealing numerous spice plants and seeds from the Dutch East Indies trading company and was so successful that, as Mr. Ware recounts, he was given a 20,000f stipend for the service he rendered to the French Crown. Further transplantation of the Nutmeg trees in Grenada, Aruba at the southeastern edge of the Caribbean Sea, created the botanical trade advantage that the French had long sought. Grenada is still today one of the largest producers of Nutmeg in the world.
More About That Nutmeg
Nutmeg and Mace are spices from the same plant. This was not commonly known in the spice trade until very late in the spice trade. According to Frederich Rosengarten in “Spices” as the desire for Nutmeg grew out of the need to treat victims of the black plague growers were told by their superior’s to “burn the trees and grow more mace.” Page the Nutmeg and Mace spice trade has been best described by Giles Milton in his Pulitzer Prize winning book, Nathanial’s Nutmeg.
As you can see from the photo above (courtesy of Chris Laurita, who took the picture while on a Caribbean cruise with his family), Nutmeg is the inner seed contained within the pod that is surrounded by the Mace Blades. The aroma and flavor of Nutmeg is intense, bitter and excellent in sweet spice rubs. Mace is even more intense, more bitter and is used to tremendous effect in Caribbean cuisine and charcuterie.