Nut butter


A nut butter is a spreadable foodstuff made by grinding nuts into a paste. The result has a high fat content and can be spread like true butter, but is otherwise unrelated. Nut butters include:
The almond, cashew, macadamia, peanut, pecan, pistachio and walnut are not true nuts in a botanical sense. However, because they are considered nuts in a culinary sense, their crushed spreads are called nut butters. Similar spreads can also be made from seeds not considered nuts in a culinary sense:
Nut and seed butters have a high content of protein, fiber, and essential fatty acids, and can be used to replace butter or margarine on bread or toast.
The grinding of nuts into a paste has a long history. Almond paste or marzipan was highly prized by the caliphs of Baghdad. "The Kitab al-Tabikh or Book of Recipes was a collection of recipes from the court of ninth-century Baghdad. The most esteemed sweet was lauziinaq, an almond paste much like marzipan." Hazelnut butter was mixed with chocolate to overcome shortages during the Napoleonic wars and WWII, which led to the invention of Gianduja .

Nutritional properties

The following table gives some approximate nutritional properties of some nut and seed butters. Many of these contain additional oils or other ingredients that may alter the nut butter's nutritional content.
ButterFood energy
kJ 		Protein
Fat
Calcium
Zinc
Almond butter2.49.5430.5
Cashew butter2.8870.8
Hazelnut butter29.5N/AN/A
Peanut butter – natural3.8870.4
Peanut butter – reduced fat46N/A0.4
Sunflower butter37N/AN/A
Soy butter 45.550N/A
Soy butter 46.530N/A
Soy-peanut butter 21.240N/A
Tahini2.68640.7