A culinary nut is a dry, edible fruit or seed that usually, but not always, has a high fat content. Nuts are used in a wide variety of edible roles, including in baking, as snacks (either roasted or raw), and as flavoring. In addition to botanical nuts, fruits and seeds that have a similar appearance and culinary role are considered to be culinary nuts. [1] Culinary nuts are divided into fruits or seeds in one of four categories:
Nuts have a rich history as food. For many indigenous peoples of the Americas, a wide variety of nuts, including acorns, American beech, and others, served as a major source of starch and fat over thousands of years. [5] Similarly, a wide variety of nuts have served as food for Indigenous Australians for many centuries. [6] Other culinary nuts, though known from ancient times, have seen dramatic increases in use in modern times. The most striking such example is the peanut. Its usage was popularized by the work of George Washington Carver, who discovered and popularized many applications of the peanut after employing peanut plants for soil amelioration in fields used to grow cotton. [7]
The following are both culinary and botanical nuts.
A drupe is a fleshy fruit surrounding a stone, or pit, containing a seed. Some of these seeds are culinary nuts as well.
A gymnosperm, from the Greek gymnospermos (γυμνόσπερμος), meaning "naked seed", is a seed that does not have an enclosure. The following gymnosperms are culinary nuts. All but the ginkgo nut are from evergreens.
These culinary nuts are seeds contained within a larger fruit, and are flowering plants.
In botany, a fruit is the seed-bearing structure in flowering plants that is formed from the ovary after flowering.
A nut is a fruit consisting of a hard or tough nutshell protecting a kernel which is usually edible. In general usage and in a culinary sense, many dry seeds are called nuts. In a botanical context, "nut" implies that the shell does not open to release the seed (indehiscent).
The hazelnut is the fruit of the hazel tree and therefore includes any of the nuts deriving from species of the genus Corylus, especially the nuts of the species Corylus avellana. They are also known as cobnuts or filberts according to species.
Macadamia is a genus of four species of trees in the flowering plant family Proteaceae. They are indigenous to Australia, native to northeastern New South Wales and central and southeastern Queensland specifically. Two species of the genus are commercially important for their fruit, the macadamia nut. Global production in 2015 was 160,000 tonnes. Other names include Queensland nut, bush nut, maroochi nut, bauple nut and, in the US, they are also known as Hawaii nut. It was an important source of bushfood for the Aboriginal peoples.
Pine nuts, also called piñón, pinoli, or pignoli, are the edible seeds of pines. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization, only 29 species provide edible nuts, while 20 are traded locally or internationally owing to their seed size being large enough to be worth harvesting; in other pines, the seeds are also edible but are too small to be of notable value as human food. The biggest producers of pine nuts are China, Russia, North Korea, Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Hazels are plants of the genus Corylus of deciduous trees and large shrubs native to the temperate Northern Hemisphere. The genus is usually placed in the birch family Betulaceae, though some botanists split the hazels into a separate family Corylaceae. The fruit of the hazel is the hazelnut.
Corylus avellana, the common hazel, is a species of flowering plant in the birch family Betulaceae. The shrubs usually grow 3–8 metres tall. The nut is round, in contrast to the longer filbert nut. Common hazel is native to Europe and Western Asia.
Corylus maxima, the filbert, is a species of hazel in the birch family Betulaceae, native to southeastern Europe and southwestern Asia.
Corylus colurna, the Turkish hazel or Turkish filbert, is a deciduous tree native to southeast Europe and southwest Asia, from the Balkans through northern Turkey to northern Iran.
Corylus cornuta, the beaked hazelnut, is a deciduous shrubby hazel with two subspecies found throughout most of North America.
A nut butter is a spreadable foodstuff made by grinding nuts, seeds or drupes into a paste. The result has a high fat content and can be spread like true butter, but is otherwise unrelated. Nut butters include:
Canarium ovatum, the pili, is a species of tropical tree belonging to the genus Canarium. It is one of approximately 600 species in the family Burseraceae. C. ovatum are native to the Philippines. They are commercially cultivated in the Philippines for their edible nuts and is believed to be indigenous to that country. The fruit and tree are often vulgarized with the umbrella term of "Java almond" which mixes multiple species of the same genus, Canarium.
Bush tucker, also called bush food, is any food native to Australia and historically eaten by Indigenous Australians, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, but it can also describe any native flora, fauna, or fungi used for culinary or medicinal purposes, regardless of the continent or culture. Animal native foods include kangaroo, emu, witchetty grubs and crocodile, and plant foods include fruits such as quandong, kutjera, spices such as lemon myrtle and vegetables such as warrigal greens and various native yams.
Macadamia oil, also known as macadamia nut oil, is a non-volatile oil extracted from the nuts of the macadamia tree, indigenous to Australia. This oil is used in culinary applications as a frying or salad oil, and in cosmetics for its emollient properties and as a fragrance fixative.
Corylus americana, the American hazelnut or American hazel, is a species of deciduous shrub in the genus Corylus, native to the eastern and central United States and extreme southern parts of eastern and central Canada.
Corylus jacquemontii is a species of hazel, found in Asia, within the Himalayas and from Afghanistan through to W. Nepal. It is a small tree or shrub, with grey bark, ovate or obovate (teardrop-shaped) leaves, small flowers and small edible nuts, grouped in small clusters.
Canarium indicum, known as galip nut, is a mainly dioecious tree native in eastern Melanesia. It is usually found in rainforests, secondary forests, old garden areas, around villages and settlements. It is also used as a shade tree, as a windbreak and in agroforestry. Canarium is important in the world food system as it can be used as a food and timber source, in traditional medicine, intercropping and agroforestry.
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