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Hickory Nut Macaroons
Two ounces of chopped hickory nut meats, two ounces pulverized sugar, white of one egg beaten light. Mix all together and bake on buttered paper in a slow oven.
A three-ingredient nut meringue that depends entirely on how dry you get it. The proportions are by weight, which makes it easy to scale.
- Slow ovenBake at 300F. These are meant to dry out and set pale rather than brown; at higher heat the sugar caramelizes and the thin cookie scorches before the center firms.
- Pulverized sugarIn older American usage this meant granulated sugar ground fine; it sat somewhere between today's superfine (caster) and confectioners' sugar. Either will work here, though modern confectioners' sugar contains cornstarch and gives a slightly softer, chalkier macaroon.
- Buttered paperParchment on a flat sheet, no butter needed. Meringue-based drops stick ferociously to bare metal and to greased foil alike.
- Beaten lightWhip the single white to firm, glossy peaks before folding in nuts and sugar. The whole structure is that one white; if it is underbeaten the mixture spreads into a puddle.
- Hickory nutsShagbark hickory is still gathered in the eastern US but rarely sold. Pecans are the same genus and the nearest substitute; the flavor is a shade sweeter and less resinous.
- Chop fineTwo ounces of nuts to two ounces of sugar is a high nut ratio. Chop them small, near a coarse meal, or the drops fall apart when lifted.
- Time and yieldTeaspoon-sized drops, spaced well apart, take roughly 20 to 25 minutes. One egg white's worth makes about twelve to fifteen small macaroons.
- CoolingLet them cool completely on the paper before peeling them off. Warm meringue tears; cooled, it releases cleanly.
Macaroons began as an almond-and-egg-white confection of southern Europe and appear in English cookery by the seventeenth century, reaching American kitchens well before coconut versions took over the name in the twentieth. American cooks substituted whatever nut was at hand, and in regions where hickory was plentiful that plausibly meant hickory, though the practice is more inference than documented record. Shagbark hickory nuts were gathered wild in autumn, cracked by hand through the winter, and treated as a treat worth the labor. The tiny quantities are telling: two ounces of picked-out hickory meats represents a real evening's work with a hammer, and the recipe stretches them as far as a single egg white will carry.