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Hickory Nut Macaroons
One cup of hickory nut meats ground fine, one cup of sugar, one egg and a half, two tablespoons flour. Bake on greased papers, putting very little in a place.
— Mrs. Kate Brooks
A four-ingredient nut macaroon of the flourless-almost sort, written for a cook who already knew what a macaroon should look like coming out of the oven. The original gives no temperature, no time and no yield, so those are the gaps worth filling.
- OvenNo temperature is given. Nut macaroons of this type want a moderate-to-slow oven, around 325F, for 12 to 15 minutes — long enough to set and lightly color the edges while the centers stay chewy. Higher heat browns the ground nuts before the interior sets.
- "One egg and a half"Beat two eggs together, then measure out three-quarters of the mixture by volume (a large egg is about 3 tablespoons out of shell, so roughly 4½ tablespoons). This is a stiff batter, not a meringue; there is no instruction to whip the whites separately and none is needed.
- Hickory nutsShagbark hickory is a wild-gathered nut with a very hard shell, rarely sold shelled. Pecan is its closest cultivated relative and the nearest substitute in flavor and oil content; use it cup for cup. Grind in short pulses — hickory and pecan both turn to paste quickly.
- Greased papersThis is the pre-parchment instruction for a lined sheet. Parchment paper needs no greasing and releases these far more cleanly than a greased sheet, which lets the sugary edges spread and stick.
- "Very little in a place"The hinge of the recipe. Use a scant teaspoon per cookie, spaced two inches apart; the batter spreads considerably as the sugar melts. Larger mounds run together and stay raw in the middle.
- YieldThe original gives none. At the scant teaspoon per cookie suggested above, this quantity of batter makes several dozen small macaroons, each roughly 1½ inches across when baked; a larger spoonful would bring the count down toward two or three dozen.
- CoolingLet them firm on the paper for a few minutes before lifting — pulled hot, they tear. They keep for a few days in a tin and soften if stored with anything moist.
Hickory nuts were free food across the eastern hardwood forests, gathered in autumn and cracked through the winter, which is exactly why a village cookbook contributor treats a cupful as an ordinary pantry item rather than a luxury. Almonds, the classic macaroon nut, had to be bought; hickory came off the ground. The result is a thrifty regional cousin of the almond macaroon that follows the same logic — ground nuts, sugar and egg bound with only a spoonful or two of flour — and it belongs to a long American habit of substituting native nuts (hickory, butternut, black walnut, pecan) into European receipts. Community cookbooks like this one, assembled from neighbors' contributions and printed with each name attached, are among the best surviving records of what local wild harvests actually became on the table.