Coconuts are not actually nuts
Chapter 1

The botanical lies in your fruit bowl

Chapter 2

The secret defense systems of vegetables

Chapter 3

The imposter nuts that fooled the world

Chapter 4

Ancient wild ancestors of modern crops

YOUR GOAL

Master of Unmasking the imposters in your kitchen

Ch 3 · The imposter nuts that fooled the world
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schopenhauer The close botanical relationship between almonds and peaches.

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schopenhauer Imposter Nuts

That peanut is a bean growing under the ground, and your almond is a seed from a fleshy stone fruit!

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The Dutch once traded the island of Manhattan for nutmeg.

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schopenhauer Peanuts develop underground through a unique botanical process.

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Almonds and the peach connection

schopenhauer Leathery green fruit splits open on a branch, revealing a hard almond pit.

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Peanuts are subterranean legumes

schopenhauer A freshly harvested peanut plant shows pods clinging to roots covered in soil.

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Spicy Little Secrets
BETA

schopenhauer Sort uncommon food facts to discover the spicy secrets of global ingredients.

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Fun Fact

Exploding seeds: Sandbox trees have fruit that explodes with a loud bang, launching seeds at speeds of 150 miles per hour.

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Glossary
drupe (noun)
A fleshy fruit with thin skin and a central stone containing the seed. In 1753, Carl Linnaeus classified the almond tree, which produces edible drupe seeds rather than true nuts.

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Gossip

Would you trade Manhattan for a lifetime supply of nutmeg?

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Quiz

Which island did the Dutch trade to the British in 1667 to secure a monopoly on the nutmeg-producing Banda Islands?

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schopenhauer The cashew seed grows beneath a toxic fruit called a cashew apple.

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Quiz

What botanical category does a coconut actually fall into?

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schopenhauer Botanists classify the coconut as a drupe rather than a true nut

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Quiz

To which fruit family are almond trees most closely related?

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Quiz

What is the botanical term for the process where a peanut plant buries its fertilized flowers to grow seeds underground?

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Quiz

What is the fleshy, pear-shaped structure from which a cashew nut hangs?

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Quiz

What corrosive substance, also found in poison ivy, is present in raw cashew shells?

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Quiz

Why are cashews never sold to consumers in their shells?

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Quiz

What is the name of the red, lacy spice that wraps around the nutmeg shell?

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