"Your Nuts, M'Lord" or "You're Nuts, M'Lord" Quiz

Answer: Hazel

Technically, a nut is defined as a dried fruit within a hard ovary wall where the seed remains attached to the ovary wall. Of those listed, only the hazel is a true nut in the botanical sense of the word. Many more seeds are termed as nuts in culinary terms. An almond is the seed of a drupe fruit (a peach is another example of a drupe), where the seed is hard and surrounded by a fleshy exocarp. Cashews are the seeds of accessory fruits (which include apples and strawberries), where not all of the flesh around the seed is derived from the ovary.

The macadamia is the seed of a follicle-type fruit.

Answer: Walnut

The term "walnut" derives from the Old English 'wealhhnutu' meaning 'foreign nut', so called because it originally came to England in Roman times from France and Italy. The deciduous Junglan trees can be found across the Temperate range from southern Europe to Japan and from Canada through California to Argentina.

Answer: Tannin

Tannin is a naturally-occurring astringent, and it is this that gives the beech nut its bitter taste (and even more so in acorns). Not that the human diet does not enjoy tannin (although in rather smaller doses) -- both tea and wine contain tannin, and coffee to a much smaller degree.

Answer: Hazel nut

The filbert ("Corylus maxima") is a species of hazel found mostly in southwest Asia and southern Europe. Nuts from the filbert are similar to similar to those from other types of hazels, which are often known generically as cob nuts. In northwestern USA, the term 'filbert' is often used for commercially-grown hazelnuts.

Answer: Chestnut

What little fat is contained in chestnuts is unsaturated. They also contain no gluten and no cholesterol. As a result, they weigh in at 180 calories/100g compared with around 600 calories/100g for the other types of nut. Chestnuts are also the only nuts that contain Vitamin C -- you can get about two-thirds of your recommended daily intake from just 100g of fresh chestnuts. You lose about half of the Vitamin C if you heat (roast) the chestnuts before eating them, though.

Answer: Hickory

The pecan nut comes from a type of hickory tree that is native to south and central North America. The word 'pecan' derives from the language of the Algonquian tribes meaning 'nut that requires a stone to crack it'.

Answer: Middle East

The almond tree ("Prunus amygdalus") was originally found mostly in southwestern Asia, the Middle East and the eastern Mediterranean. Today, though, the USA and Spain are the world's major almond producers. Almonds can be found in many traditional foods -- they form the base for Pasanda-style curries in India, in Iran they form the base for baby food, in Italy they are used particularly to make macaroons.

The best-known use for almonds is, perhaps, to make marzipan, which is popularly used in confectionery from Paris to San Francisco.

Answer: Hornbeam

The tree that produces the Brazil nut is the Ericales order that includes numerous trees, bushes and herbaceous plants such as gooseberries, blueberries, cranberries, persimmons, azalea and phlox. The hornbeam, a small hardwood tree native to China and east Asia, are part of the Fagales order of flowering plants that includes beech, walnut and bayberry.

Answer: Cashew

Originally native to Brazil, the Cashew tree ("Anacardium occidentale") is now widely grown throughout the tropics. Nigeria is the leading producer of cashew nuts, closely followed by India.
Not widely transported because of their fragile skins, the cashew apple is used to make a refreshing mango-like fruit drink.

Answer: China

Perhaps more peanuts are eaten in the USA than anywhere else, but China is far and away the world's largest grower with a 41.5% share of the world's production. In 2008-09, China produced an amazing 14.3 million metric tons of peanuts. In that same period, India produced 6.25m (18.2%) and the USA 2.4m (6.8%).

The largest European grower of peanuts, Greece, produced about 2000 tons and did not make the world's top ten.