Nut or Not? Trivia Quiz

Answer:

The confusion over what constitutes a nut stems from the difference between culinary and botanical definitions. A true, or botanical, nut is defined as a simple, dry fruit encased in a hard shell that does not open at maturity (botanically, it is indehiscent) to release the single seed inside. The fruit wall itself hardens to form the shell. This definition is quite restrictive and only includes a few well-known edibles. Examples of the most popular undisputed true nuts are acorns, chestnuts, and hazelnuts (filberts). Also included in this quiz are the kola nut, breadnut, candlenut, mongongo, karuka, beech, palm nut, and sacha inchi.

Most items widely referred to as nuts in cooking and commerce are botanically categorized as something else, often something called a drupe. A drupe is a fruit with a fleshy outer part (like a peach or olive) surrounding a central hard shell, or stone, which, in turn, contains the edible seed. When we eat a walnut, pecan, or almond, we are eating the seed that was contained within the stone of the original drupe fruit.

Other imposters include peanuts, which are legumes (like beans and peas), and pine nuts or Brazil nuts, which are simply edible seeds from a cone or large woody capsule, respectively, not true hard-shelled fruits. A coconut is a dry drupe. One of the most interesting, botanically, is the cashew, which is the seed of an accessory fruit (meaning it's not formed from a flower's ovary).