NUTMEG ESSENTIAL OIL – spicy, warm, and balsamic essential oil with hints of sweet wood, pepper, and dry vanilla.

Spices, nutmeg, woody, astringent, slightly resinous. Sweet, warm, terpene-like, elastic, peppery, nutmeg, sweet, warm, and spicy.
It pairs well with oakmoss, lavandin, bay leaf, Peruvian balsam, orange, geranium, musk sage, rosemary, lime, petitgrain, mandarin, coriander, and other spicy oils. Thanks to its balsamic, fresh, and lingering citrus notes, this oil pairs easily with oriental, amber, and powdery bases.
Nutmeg is a pyramidal tree that grows up to 15 meters tall. Its fruit is a pale yellow, fleshy drupe resembling an apricot. Once ripe, the fleshy mesocarp splits open, revealing a seed protected by a brown husk. This seed, rich in essential oil, is used in the distillation process. It is surrounded by a bright red-orange ray that colors the fruit vividly. The fruits are harvested as they ripen using a long-handled "fruit picker" and basket, which allows the fruit to be picked from the tree. The cleaned seeds are dried in the shade to prevent lipid deterioration (melting temperature 38°C). After six to eight weeks, the inner core is sufficiently dry and can be separated from the hard outer husk. It takes seven years for nutmeg to produce its first harvest. Productivity increases with age, with optimum yields reaching between 15 and 30 years. Nutmeg oil is obtained by steam distillation or steam and water distillation of dried and fresh nutmeg seeds.
It's best to remove most of the base oil from nutmeg seeds before distillation (for example, by hydraulic pressing). The base oil can be extracted with alcohol to obtain small amounts of essential oil that have dissolved in the base oil during pressing. Interestingly, nutmeg is a favorite food of some worms, which eat the fat but leave the fibers containing the essential oil intact (which is likely poisonous to worms!). Therefore, worm-infested nutmeg is easier to distill, but its unsightly appearance may indirectly suggest to the buyer that it's an old, poorly stored nutmeg.
The base oil is odorless and tasteless (primarily glyceryl myristate) and may contain small amounts or significant fractions of essential oil in solution or emulsion during the hydraulic pressing of nutmeg seeds. Therefore, producing nutmeg oil is not without its challenges for the distiller. Only recently have nutmeg producers begun producing the oil locally (in the West Indies and now also in Indonesia). However, a significant amount of nutmeg oil continues to be produced in the United States and Europe by industry specialists who select the raw materials for distillation and have years of experience distilling "complex" spices. The so-called "Padang" nutmeg from Indonesia is generally preferred for distillation in Europe.
Dried nutmeg as a spice is a well-known commercial product, and extracting essential oil from unattractive nutmegs (worm-infested, broken, oddly shaped and sized, etc.) is clearly a boon to the importer of all nutmeg varieties (provided the nutmeg's quality is not otherwise compromised).
Perfumers no longer distinguish between Nutmeg Mace essential oil and Nutmeg Nutmeg oil.
Nutmeg oil is a mobile, pale yellow or almost water-white oil with a fresh, light, warm, and spicy aroma, with an astringent top note and a rich, sweet, and spicy aftertaste. After drying, the aroma becomes slightly woody, but in good-quality oils it remains warm and sweet. It bears a certain resemblance to the scent of sweet marjoram butter. Recently, this oil has been increasingly used in perfumery to create modern, "spicy" scents and "men's scents" in aftershave lotions and other products. Small additions to imaginative bouquets or aldehyde perfumes, floral compositions, chypres, and so on, can have very interesting effects.
Nutmeg oil pairs well with amyl salicylate, oakmoss, bay leaf oil, linalool, lavandin oil, coumarin or diritang extract, methyl cinnamic aldehyde, Peru balsam oil, etc. For aroma, terpene-free oils are preferred, although the best natural oils have superior diffusivity and a masking effect.
The oil is used in the preparation of dishes with other spices, for meat sauces, and other flavorings. It is one of the main ingredients in tomato ketchup. Terpene-free nutmeg oil is generally obtained by countercurrent solvent extraction, as the monoterpenes present in nutmeg oil are extremely sensitive to heat and tend to polymerize or form unpleasant-smelling compounds during dry distillation. Terpene-free oil is used to flavor some soft drinks, in spice blends for canning, in meat sauces, and in condiments, etc.
Natural nutmeg oil is not a very potent flavoring. The recommended dose is 1.50 to 3.00 mg%, while the minimum permitted dose is 0.50 to 1.00 mg% for the best qualities of East Indian nutmeg oil distilled in Europe.