A popular Stone-Age food in parts of northern Europe, as shown by the hazelnut shells in the middens. Somebody could start a diet fad based on this.
a pity that isn’t pecans, I could really get behind that. LOL
Over here it was both beech nuts and hickory nuts. The Indians would gather great quantities of them and pound them shell and all in a mortar, then boil them and skim off the oil to store as a butter-like substance that could be either used in making a hot drink or a spread or for a cooking oil.
The thick green hulls that cover the nutshells can be ground and used to brew a drink that tastes good, like chocolate... but only in small dixie cup amounts or it would clean you out.
They did not utilize the tasty black walnuts as much, probably because they couldn’t be prepared the same way without the shells making the concoction bitter; the nutmeats have to be carefully picked from the shell. When used as a drink they would function like a wormer.
Shagbark hickory nuts [and the giant hickory nut of swampeast Missouri] are in my opinion the best tasting nut of all, but darn hard to beat squirrels to and too difficult to process for commercial use.