Nutmeg, like all spices, is paleo. The fruit of the nutmeg tree is the only tropical fruit to produce two spices; nutmeg and mace. The egg-shaped seed within the fruit of the nutmeg tree is what we know as nutmeg, while the dried reddish covering of the seed is mace.
While today we know that nutmeg does not contain medicinal qualities, in Elizabethan times it was believed to ward off the plague, which caused it’s value to soar. And that’s only part of the interesting history of this seed.