I remember reading somewhere that “regular” pepper, such as black and white pepper were popular, because they were reasonably easy to get once you had a trade fleet up and running.

Also, salt was popular, but it was easy to make anywhere, so the colonialism didn’t really factor in to supply:demand, other than a little increase in need for food preservation for long sea journeys.

Nutmeg basically caused east india company to commit genocide because of the popularity.