A food writer explores the little-noticed role of nutmeg in cola, after trying to taste the drink the way one tastes wine. He cites Harold McGee, who in his book "Nose Dive" suggests sharing a bottle of cola and trying to identify the six spice essences behind it. The article notes that cola’s flavor is a blend, recreated today with about 50 artificial flavorings, even though the original formula was made from six essences and has nothing to do with the African kola nut.
The origin story goes back to 1886, when John Pemberton was looking for a name for a soda that would sell well in pharmacies. He chose a name linked to cocaine and cola, and mixed his drink with what the article describes as almost no cocaine, establishing another food-industry tradition. Pemberton wanted a product that suggested fun, sophistication, and health, with the lightness of root beer, the complexity of wine, and some of the woodiness of infusions, producing a completely invented but distinctive cola taste.
The author then found a published formula from the book "For God, Country and Coca Cola". It uses 16 drops of essential oils and juices, including lemon, orange, orange blossom, cinnamon, coriander seed, and two drops of nutmeg oil. He says nutmeg is the “quiet star” of cola, because those two drops give the flavor its color and depth. When he mixed his own cola spice blend, nutmeg was the ingredient that turned a flat citrus mix into something that clearly tasted like cola, and he notes that online recipes often say vanilla plus nutmeg alone resemble cola better than spice blends without it.
The article argues that nutmeg is a major force in food flavoring more broadly. The food industry buys about 90% of the world’s nutmeg crop, and the spice, together with black pepper, helps define sausages and other meat products. It also survived the late-medieval cleaning-up of elite European cooking, when most heavy spicing was removed from refined dishes, leaving nutmeg prominent in French cream sauces and meat recipes. The writer ends by saying he now wants to try identifying nutmeg’s own components by smell. The article is signed by Assaf Abir, author of "Not a Cookbook".
