The 3-Ingredient Soup President Andrew Jackson Loved Included A Gallon Of Hickory Nuts

Food trends vary greatly based on geography and time period. A typical lunch that you might have today in Boise, Idaho is probably very different from the typical lunch of somebody in Vientiane, Laos. The food you eat today also bears little resemblance to what might have been enjoyed during Civil War times, when U.S. president Abraham Lincoln dined on beef tongue in aspic or, some decades earlier, when Andrew Jackson was cracking hickory nuts like it was going out of style.

They didn't call Andrew Jackson "Old Hickory" for nothing. The man apparently loved hickory nuts. If you've never had one yourself, the nuts are described as being buttery and slightly sweet, One of his favorite meals involving hickory nuts was old hickory nut soup. The recipe is stunningly simple — calling for 1 gallon of cracked and crushed hickory nuts steeped in 1 quart of hot water, strained and served with 4 tablespoons of sugar stirred in.

Now, even if you've never had hickory nut soup before, you might notice there are a few ingredients missing before you'd call this a proper soup. It's just nuts, sugar, and water — oddly similar the plant-based milk alternatives of today, and you're not wrong. The end result is basically a sweetened nut milk. The process also produces far less liquid than you might expect because each hickory nut contains very little nut meat. 

There's a good chance you've never had a hickory nut yourself, but they're one Native American ingredient you should try – that is, if you can. These nuts are not commercially farmed, and they are notoriously hard to get into. A typical shelled-hickory-nut to nut meat yield is only about 20% to 25%.  They also have to be harvested by hand because they can't simply be shaken out of trees like other nuts, and their hard shells require specialized equipment to open. Because of this, they are rarely available, and when they are, they tend to be expensive. 

President Andrew Jackson's soup was likely an adaptation of kanuchi, a Native American hickory nut soup that was typically served over a base of cooked hominy. Because the nuts were so hard to crack, traditional versions involved smashing the shells and nuts together until a ball formed, held together by the natural oils. This could be stored for a long time, which made it ideal during cold winter months. To make the soup, hot water was poured over the ball and then strained into a pot. That allowed the shell pieces to be filtered out, leaving just the broth.

Some versions include salt, others add sugar or maple syrup for sweetness, and more modern recipes may include sweet potato or other complementary ingredients. The dish would have been very simple and calorie dense — ideal during times when other food sources were scarce. First lady Sarah Polk used hickory nuts to make her favorite cake, too, so maybe the former president was on to something.