Vitiblog

Source : TheWineBlog.net [en]

by Martin Field

Nuts are a favourite accompaniment to wine. They are delicious when served with bubbly and other aperitifs and a plate of nuts and dried fruit is obligatory when savouring a vintage port after dinner.

But did you ever notice that in any bowl of mixed nuts, in shell or not, certain varieties are always eaten in exactly the same order of preference?

On our dining table, we keep a big wooden bowl full of nuts in shell. Typically, macadamias, walnuts, brazils, almonds, pecans, and sometimes, hazelnuts.

(NB For the macadamias you need a special vice type nutcracker. We found a dusty thumbscrew in our dungeon that seems to do the job quite well.)

Anyway, scientific tests have proven that, assuming the bowl starts off with equal numbers of each nut type, the nuts will inevitably be consumed in the following order. First crackees are macadamias and walnuts, followed then by brazils and pecans (the pecans’ thinner shells are a bit fiddly), then come almonds, and, mouldering in last place, dull hazelnuts [..]