Pistachio Nuts
Archimandrite Nikifor’s Biblical Encyclopedia
(Gen. 43:11)—among the choice products that Jacob instructed his sons to take to Egypt as a gift. The Hebrew term is commonly understood to mean pistachio nuts, the fruit of Pistacia vera, though older interpreters sometimes confused this tree with the terebinth. Its edible kernels are greenish and enclosed in hard shells. Claims in the source about the precise history of the tree’s cultivation in Egypt and Europe are not needed to identify the biblical gift.