This paper looks at the use of nuts in their social context in late antique Palestine and Babylonia. From Jewish Talmudic sources it appears that adults ate nuts often as dessert or when travelling, but they seem to have been little used... more
This paper looks at the use of nuts in their social context in late antique Palestine and Babylonia. From Jewish Talmudic sources it appears that adults ate nuts often as dessert or when travelling, but they seem to have been little used in cooking. Nuts appear, however, mostly in association with children. They were seen as desirable food for children, especially at festival time. Nuts would be used as bribes to get children to behave as adults wanted-by shopkeepers to entice them into their shops, by parents to keep them awake on Passover night, or to reinforce their memories of important rituals. Nuts are recorded also in testing children's development. For their part, children put them at the head of their 'wants' list, perhaps because after eating them they could also use the shells as toys. Contemporary Christian sources even imply that nuts were the currency of the child.
