Pine nuts

One US cup of pine nuts weighs 135 grams. Going the other way, 100 grams is about 0.74 cups.

Also called pignoli, pignolias, pinoli, raw pine nuts, stone pine seeds.

Two sources agree within tolerance. USDA FoodData Central publishes Nuts, pine nuts, dried (SR Legacy) at 1 cup = 135 g, implying a density of 0.5706 g/mL. King Arthur's Ingredient Weight Chart lists 'Pine nuts' at 1/2 cup = 71 g, extrapolating to 142 g per cup and 0.6003 g/mL. The gap between them is 5.19%, well inside the 10% milled tolerance for whole nuts, so this entry publishes USDA's figure of 135 g per cup and names both sources. The USDA cup portion is confirmed by proportional consistency across cup fractions and by the calorie ratio (909 kcal per cup divided by 673 kcal per 100 g = 135 g).

Pine nuts pack at roughly the same apparent density as hazelnuts despite being dramatically different in size. Individual pine nut kernels weigh approximately 0.5 g each and are teardrop-shaped, roughly 10 to 15 mm long, while hazelnut kernels are approximately 1.2 g each and roughly spherical. Naïve intuition suggests that smaller kernels should pack denser, filling gaps more efficiently, but the pattern breaks for elongated shapes. Small teardrops bridge and lock into arrangements that leave voids at each interlock, while spheres slide past each other into settled positions. The result is that hazelnuts and pine nuts land at the same 135 g per cup on USDA's tables despite the size difference of nearly three-to-one. Peanuts, which have similar small-kernel size but flat cleavage faces from splitting, pack denser at 146 g per cup because the flat faces allow flat-to-flat contact that teardrops cannot achieve.

The commercial pine nut sold as pignoli or pignolia is the seed of Pinus pinea, the Italian stone pine. The species classification matters for both flavor and density: seeds of Pinus koraiensis, the Korean pine, and Pinus sibirica, the Siberian pine, dominate imported product to the United States and Europe. Kernel shape and mass vary slightly between species, but published USDA data averages across commercial sources rather than breaking out by species. Pinyon pine nuts (Pinus edulis), a distinct North American species used primarily in the American Southwest, have a different fat profile and different density, and are treated as a separate USDA record. This entry covers the standard commercial pignoli only.

Product variants: raw versus dry-roasted pine nuts differ by approximately 4 percent in moisture, which slightly increases apparent density after roasting but rarely crosses tolerance. Pine nut oil is a distinct product not covered by this site's oil entries because King Arthur does not list it and USDA data is sparse. Pine nut butter, sometimes sold as an alternative to almond butter, is a fat-category product with its density set by fat content rather than kernel packing.

Pine nuts are placed in the milled category alongside other whole and chopped nuts and whole seeds. The category rule tracks physical packing behavior rather than milling: whole seed kernels pack by scoop with air gaps in the same way that whole tree nuts do. The 10 percent category tolerance applies here, and the 5.19 percent observed gap between sources is well inside it.

No standards body publishes a bulk density for pine nuts. Codex Alimentarius has a standard for pine nuts covering moisture content, defect tolerances and aflatoxin limits but not physical density of the kernels. Two independent authoritative sources agree within tolerance, so this entry is held at medium confidence. A third independent source, such as a professional culinary reference or a producer's laboratory measurement, matching within tolerance would move it to high confidence.