Mace

As I have been working on the recipe book, I came across a recipe containing Mace. It is in my mother's Raison Drop Cookies. Somewhere in the back of my mind I did remember hearing about a spice called Mace, but don't remember if my mother ever had any or not. She probably did, but I don't remember any. So I googled Mace and found a plethora of information about mace...from it being a medieval weapon-a big club with metal spikes sticking out of the end, looks like it could do lots of damage; to Mace, the protection spray; to the spice. I looked up the protection spray and it has the name Mace, but is not made from the spice, unlike pepper spray which does use a compound from peppers.
I found the information on the spice very interesting. Originally Nutmeg and Mace came from the Spice Islands. The Spice Islands were controlled by the Dutch up until World War II. Mace is actually a bright lacy covering (or aril) of the Nutmeg. Mace is removed from around the nutmeg and dried. Because there is much less Mace than Nutmeg that is produced from the trees, it is generally more expensive. For every 100 pounds of nutmeg produced, only 1 pound of mace is produced. Mace is generally flattened into "blades" or can be ground. I did look in the store and did find ground mace but no blades. As luck would have it my Penzeys Spices catalog came and they did have the blades to puchase. (Just in case you are looking for some.) The flavoring of Mace is similar to Nutmeg-go figure-but stronger. It is said to work well with cream sauces and custards, cream soups and chicken dishes. I will be making the Raison Drops today and I'll let you know how they turned out. This is also another recipe that just uses the generic "fat". So I'll have to decide which fat I'll be using. I might make two batches, one with butter and one with shortening and see if I think one is better than the other.