Mace vs. Allspice: Differences and Substitutes

Mace and allspice both bring warmth to a dish, but they come from unrelated plants on opposite sides of the world, and their flavor chemistry is different. Mace is the dried aril, the lacy covering around the nutmeg seed, from a tree native to the Banda Islands of Indonesia.¹² Allspice is the dried berry of a tree native to southern Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean.³⁴ Allspice’s oil is mostly eugenol, the compound that dominates cloves;⁵ mace’s oil is built around a different group of compounds and tastes like a gentler cousin of nutmeg.⁶

Side by side

	Mace	Allspice
Species	Myristica fragrans, the nutmeg tree²	Pimenta dioica⁴
Family and order	Myristicaceae, in the order Magnoliales, the same order as magnolias²⁷	Myrtaceae, in the order Myrtales⁴
Native range	Maluku (Banda Islands)²	Southern Mexico to Central America and the Caribbean⁴
Part used	The aril: a bright red, net-like covering partly wrapped around the seed⁸	The dried berry; berries turn from green to a dull reddish brown as they dry³
Color as sold	Red when fresh, turning orange-yellow as it cures in the dark; the red pigment is lycopene⁹	Brown, peppercorn-like berries; Spanish explorers named them pimienta, pepper⁵
Essential oil	4 to 17 percent of mace (FAO)⁶	About 4.5 percent for Jamaican allspice (Britannica)³
Main aroma compounds	Mace oil carries a higher share of aromatic ethers than nutmeg oil; elemicin led that fraction in Grenadian samples⁶	Eugenol, 50 to 80 percent of berry oil (PROSEA);⁵ eugenol, methyl eugenol and myrcene are the main constituents across studies¹⁰
Flavor (editorial)	Warm and nutmeg-like, lighter, with a peppery edge	Clove-forward warmth with cinnamon and nutmeg notes
Forms	Whole blades and ground; ground is more common¹¹	Whole berries and ground⁵

The oil figures come from different studies and samples, and they measure different things, so they can’t be ranked against each other.

Two different flavor families

Allspice tastes like a blend, but isn’t one. Britannica says allspice is named because the dried berry’s flavor resembles a combination of cloves, cinnamon and nutmeg; it is a single spice from one tree.³ America’s Test Kitchen describes it the same way.¹¹ The clove part has a chemical basis: eugenol is 50 to 80 percent of allspice berry oil in PROSEA’s figures.⁵

Mace tastes like nutmeg, and sources disagree on how strongly. Mace and nutmeg come from the same fruit. In a study of Grenadian oils summarized by FAO, mace oil always had a higher share of aromatic ethers than nutmeg oil, and taste panels could tell the two oils apart.⁶ How mace compares in strength is disputed. America’s Test Kitchen calls ground mace “a more pungent nutmeg.”¹¹ The Spice House’s blog says mace is more piquant and somewhat less sweet than nutmeg,¹² while its ground-mace product page calls the flavor subtler and mellower.¹³ McCormick says nutmeg is slightly more intense.¹⁴ The full comparison is on mace vs. nutmeg.

In short, allspice is the more clove-like of the two, and mace the more nutmeg-like. That summary is our judgment from the chemistry above, not a tasting result.

How each is used

	Mace	Allspice
Savory	Sauces, pickles, and meat and fish dishes (Britannica);¹ savory dishes, pickles and ketchups (PROSEA);⁹ seafood (FAO)¹⁵	Jamaican jerk, where pimento (allspice) and fresh thyme are essential and the meat is traditionally smoked over pimento wood;¹⁶ whole berries in broths, gravies and pickling liquids⁵
Sweet	Cakes, doughnuts and fruit pies (FAO)¹⁵	Widely used in baking (Britannica);³ mincemeat pie and gingerbread (America’s Test Kitchen)¹¹
Blends	Counted among the spices commonly used in garam masala, whose recipes vary widely by region¹⁷	An ingredient in McCormick’s pumpkin pie spice and apple pie spice¹⁸¹⁹
Technique	Whole blades can steep in a liquid and be removed (our suggestion)	America’s Test Kitchen sometimes blooms ground allspice in butter before adding it to a dough or batter¹¹

Can one stand in for the other?

Only partly. They share warmth but not flavor, so the dish will taste different either way.

Allspice in place of mace (Attributed): McCormick says allspice has a similar peppery sweetness but a much stronger flavor, and advises using half as much and adding more as needed.¹⁴ Expect a clove note that mace doesn’t have.⁵ If you have nutmeg, it is the closer match; see mace substitutes.

Mace in place of allspice (Method): We found no published ratio. Start with half the allspice amount and taste. Mace won’t supply allspice’s clove note, so a small pinch of ground cloves alongside it gets closer, a suggestion carried over from allspice substitutes. In jerk, where allspice is essential,¹⁶ there is no real substitute.

Buying and safety

Ground allspice is sometimes adulterated with clove stems and starchy products, according to PROSEA.⁵ Whole berries are easy to check and grind.
Mace carries the same aromatic ethers as nutmeg, in a higher share of its oil.⁶ One of them, myristicin, is metabolized in the body to MMDA, a compound with hallucinogenic properties, according to the Tennessee Poison Center.²⁰ The National Capital Poison Center advises keeping nutmeg and its relative mace out of children’s reach.²¹ Normal cooking amounts are not the concern; see too much nutmeg for the dose figures and their sources.

What isn’t known

No study compares the flavor strength of mace and allspice directly; the half-as-much figure is McCormick’s guidance.
No published ratio exists for mace in place of allspice.
Sources disagree on whether mace is milder or stronger than nutmeg, so this page calls it neither.
No source opened for this page names mace in specific Indian dishes or chutneys; those uses are left out.

Mace, Encyclopaedia Britannica. britannica.com · Reference work ↩ ↩²
Myristica fragrans Houtt., Plants of the World Online, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. powo.science.kew.org · Reference work ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴
Allspice, Encyclopaedia Britannica. britannica.com · Reference work ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵
Pimenta dioica (L.) Merr., Plants of the World Online, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. powo.science.kew.org · Reference work ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴
Sulistiarini, Pimenta dioica, PROSEA, via Pl@ntUse. uses.plantnet-project.org · Reference work ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸
Production, handling and processing of nutmeg and mace, Section VI: Composition and constituents, FAO. fao.org · Reference work ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵
Magnolia grandiflora L., Plants of the World Online, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. powo.science.kew.org · Reference work ↩
Marcelle, Production, handling and processing of nutmeg and mace, Section I: The plant and the environment, FAO, 1995. fao.org · Reference work ↩
Flach and Tjeenk Willink, Myristica fragrans, PROSEA, via Pl@ntUse. uses.plantnet-project.org · Reference work ↩ ↩²
Andrade Avila, Cruz-Olivares and Pérez-Alonso, Antioxidant Effect and Medicinal Properties of Allspice Essential Oil, IntechOpen, 2022. intechopen.com · Peer-reviewed ↩
Getting to Know: Baking Spices, America’s Test Kitchen. americastestkitchen.com · Publication ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵
Mace Spice Explained, The Spice House, 2024. thespicehouse.com · Merchant ↩
Mace, Ground, product page, The Spice House. thespicehouse.com · Merchant ↩
What is Mace: Uses, Substitutes and Recipes, McCormick, 2025. mccormick.com · Merchant ↩ ↩²
Production, handling and processing of nutmeg and mace, Section VII: Utilization of products, FAO. fao.org · Reference work ↩ ↩²
Vaughn Stafford Gray, “A Brief History of Jamaican Jerk”, Smithsonian Magazine, 2020. smithsonianmag.com · Publication ↩ ↩²
How to make garam masala, Great British Chefs. greatbritishchefs.com · Publication ↩
McCormick Pumpkin Pie Spice, product page, McCormick & Company. mccormick.com · Merchant ↩
McCormick Apple Pie Spice, product page, McCormick & Company. mccormick.com · Merchant ↩
Nena Bowman, “Nutmeg, a Potentially Uninvited Holiday Guest?”, Tennessee Poison Center, 2020. vumc.org · Reference work ↩
Rose Ann Gould Soloway, “Kitchen surprises and cautions”, National Capital Poison Center. poison.org · Reference work ↩

Mace vs. Allspice: Two Unrelated Warm Spices Compared